The Welfare Crime Investigation proposes that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency should have its own law enforcement operations. This should consist of a criminal investigation section and an intelligence operation to prevent, deter and detect welfare crimes.
The investigation estimates that approximately 80 people will work on the Social Insurance Agency's crime prevention. It is proposed that they be based in various locations across the country where the agency has offices.
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 perform registry searches to uncover benefit crimes and related crimes such as document forgery and false declarations.
The mandate also includes the ability to carry out 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).
However, it is proposed that criminal investigations will continue to be led by prosecutors, who can then call on the Social Insurance Agency's criminal investigators to assist them. The agency will also not be allowed to use force, meaning 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 down
The background to the proposals is that the police have not been able to prioritize crime involving financial support sufficiently 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.
Corrected: A previous version contained incorrect information about the number of people who will work in law enforcement and where they will work.
