The Social Security Crime Investigation proposes that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency be given its own law enforcement operations. It will consist of a criminal investigation section and an intelligence operation to prevent, deter and detect social security crimes.
Between 40 and 50 people are expected to work in the Social Insurance Agency's crime prevention department. It is proposed that they will have their workplaces in police stations in eight locations around the country.
The mandate to combat crime will be powerful, and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency must manage it in the best possible way, says investigator Mikael Westberg.
Conduct interrogations
It is proposed that the authority be able to conduct interrogations, participate in house searches, conduct surveillance and conduct registry searches to uncover benefit crimes and related crimes such as document forgery and false declarations.
The mandate also includes the ability to execute seizures, including of money, and conduct remote internet searches for electronically stored documents.
If we go ahead with this, you could say that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency will become a kind of benefits police, says Minister of Social Insurance Anna Tenje (M).
But it is proposed that criminal investigations will continue to be led by prosecutors, who can then call on the Swedish Social Insurance Agency's criminal investigators to assist them. The agency will also not be allowed to use force, which means that its staff cannot arrest anyone or conduct searches on their own.
There will be no change to the police's monopoly on the use of force, says Westberg.
Closed
The background to the proposals is that the police have not been able to prioritize crime involving financial support to a sufficient extent, and that there has been a lack of expertise.
Society has not managed to address the problem, says the investigator.
A rough estimate is that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency and the Swedish Pensions Agency incorrectly pay out various benefits and contributions worth SEK 11 billion each year. Half of this is estimated to be due to deliberately incorrect information being submitted.
Every year, 8,000-9,000 subsidy violations are reported, but 75 percent of those investigations are closed.
The investigator estimates that it would cost 140 million kronor to build up the Social Insurance Agency's law enforcement operations and that those operations would cost 170 million kronor per year to run.
The inquiry proposes that the proposals come into force on January 1, 2028.
