Filenews 16 October 2021 - by Adamos Adamou
Secure information from "F" reports that the Ministry of Labour, since the audit so far of the support given during the pandemic, has identified around 4,500 cases where businesses and self-employed will have to return money and has already begun submitting claims for their collection. A return of €4.5 million has been demanded so far and already an amount of €2.5 million has returned to the coffers of the state.
The refund to the Ministry of Labour, which had been given as emergency support, was mainly made through offsetting with other benefits to those who deliberately or without deceit (due to mistakes) took money without fulfilling the requirements.
For now, the labour ministry is checking the applications submitted for the projects implemented up to March this year and has identified hundreds of problematic cases.
Most of the ministry's claims to businesses and self-employed workers arise due to the non-satisfaction of the condition for the percentage of reduction of the turnover of each enterprise. Several applicants did not have the turnover reduction required to receive support.
There have been few, but there have been cases of companies that were found to have made redundancies, while the basic condition of the support plans was, and still is, that there should be no releases of staff for a certain period of time. It is noted that the audits of the Ministry of Labour are focused on companies that received large amounts, but are carried out for all sectors of the economy, after a risk analysis and will continue for some time, even after the end of the support plans.
The ministry's intention is that, upon completion of the audit that is being carried out for the examination of specific conditions set by the plans, it will come back for a more detailed examination of the applications, seeing other parameters.
It is worth noting, however, that, after the lifting of the restrictions, the applications for the special plans of the Ministry of Labour have decreased compared to before, but also that the plans themselves have become even more targeted, increasing, among other things, the percentage of decrease in turnover for participation in them and extending the period when a company is not allowed to proceed with redundancies.
As mentioned, the special support through the plans of the Ministry of Labour ends, after 20 months, at the end of October. The relevant decisions on the latest plans in October will be announced at the end of the month. The application process for the 19th period of the projects, the ones that took power in September, was completed at midnight last Monday.
