The British Economy Ministry estimates the total amount of fraud linked to state-guaranteed loans during the pandemic at £4.9 billion, or about €5.8 billion.

Recently, business has multiplied across the channel: between business leaders who have used this money to pay themselves salaries, those who have taken advantage of it to renovate their homes or even that others who have decided to gamble, money echo,

“Full fraud evaluation will take time”

So far 159 business executives have been banned from practicing because of fraud. However, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, in a report published in mid-May, recalled that the scale of the incident could still be too high.

“The full assessment of fraud will still take time, as estimates change based on payments made,” the commission said.

47 billion pounds between April 2020 and March 2021

The ease of granting these state-guaranteed loans would explain the extent of fraud to a large extent. In fact companies validated the information in their files before providing support within 48 hours.

In the period from April 2020 to March 2021, the equipment will eventually cost £47 billion, against 26 billion initially planned by the government.