The sheer scale of fraud committed during the pandemic was exacerbated by the limited level of checks when claims were made for covid grants. Kate Gee, counsel at specialist disputes firm Signature Litigation, examines the scale of the issue
An inescapable outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic is the marked increase in fraudulent activity. Individual or corporate economic difficulties, the increased opportunity for fraud arising from changing and remote working practices and the increase of online banking, retail and other business activity are all among the reasons cited.
It is also an uncomfortable truth for the UK government that its Covid response schemes have inadvertently created unprecedented opportunities for fraud – and only now is the potential scale of it beginning to come to light.
The Treasury has launched a remarkable 23,000 inquiries into potentially fraudulent payments made during the pandemic. Last year, HMRC announced that it was investigating 27,000 cases of possible fraud relating to the furlough scheme alone.
