Collaboration against benefit fraud

Two of today’s central concepts are collaboration and benefit fraud. Authorities and other actors have a need to find convenient forms of collaboration in order to solve their tasks. One such area of collaboration is fraud against the benefits and insurances of the Swedish Social Insurance Agency; a problem that has received ever increasing notice in
recent years. We are talking about crime against the welfare systems,
and how the Social Insurance Agency, the Police Service and the Prosecution Authority can collaborate effectively.

In the Swedish county Västmanland, the prosecutors, police and Social Insurance Agency took the initiative of meeting regularly in order to
discuss, at an overall level, reports and investigation of fraud against the
Social Insurance Agency. Reporting routines and other methods were
improved. The Social Insurance Agency appointed special officials to
handle these matters, and the Police and the Prosecution Authority appointed special police staff and prosecutors in a similar way. These persons also attended a joint training course in order for the officials of the
Social Insurance Agency to get a more in-depth insight into the roles of
the police and the prosecutors, and for the police and prosecutors to
learn about the tasks of the Social Insurance Agency and the social insurance systems. This form of collaboration was called “the Västmanland
model”, and has since spread across the country.

As commissioned by the Delegation against Incorrect Payments (the
FUT Delegation), the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention
(Brå) has evaluated the Västmanland model and made study visits to
the counties of Västmanland and Skåne. The project has also glanced at
another form of collaboration, SAMEB, Collaboration against Economic Crime, in order to investigate similarities with and differences from
the Västmanland model.