The team, which has been operating since the beginning of March, is hunting for people on welfare who might be working or have undeclared assets, according to 20 Minutes.
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In addition, it is looking for those living in the canton but pretending to live somewhere else like Monaco, Dubai or another Swiss canton.
Last year the canton offered an amnesty which ended at the end of October. Now it’s actively cracking down.
The canton estimates welfare fraud at between 3% to 7% of social spending, or around CHF 85 million.
One way to estimate the amount of time someone lives in a house is to measure water and electricity usage.
Finding undeclared assets is now much easier. The automatic exchange of international bank account information, which started recently, means foreign bank accounts are easier to find. In some cases this information could lead to undeclared foreign real estate.
More on this:
20 Minutes article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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