According to an investigation presented on Tuesday, all larger assistance companies have employees who in various ways can be linked to organized crime.
This is an alarming development, notes Johan Olsson, who is the head of the police's national operational department (Noa). Not least because the profits from crimes such as benefit fraud are largely invested in new criminal activities.
This is organized crime that generates billions and feeds the networks, making them larger. The money is reinvested and enables the criminality to expand into more areas, he says.
So it's a major problem, not just because the money should have gone to good causes, but because it instead finances very bad things.
"Easy access"
The problems also exist within other areas of welfare than just the assistance industry, notes the Noa chief. For example, previous investigations have revealed similar problems among companies that run HVB homes.
Common to the criminality is that it requires relatively advanced set-ups.
Generally, we feel that organized crime has reached a scope and capability where they have easy access to different companies and experts, says Johan Olsson.
Unfortunately, they have come a long way from just targeting industries where there may be a lot of cash handling and less control.
"System-level problem"
His conclusion is that society must adapt to the new criminality to a greater extent. For the police, this means, among other things, investigating companies to a greater extent rather than individual individuals.
Simply put, we must design everything from welfare systems to credit systems in a way that takes into account the criminality we have today.
It's no longer just a single actor that we can prosecute away, but it's a problem at the system level.
