by During the Covid pandemic, to reduce the risk of businesses failures, the Swiss government back stopped around CHF 17 billion of Covid loans granted to 138,000 businesses by 125 banks between 26 March and 31 July 2020. Photo by Nikita Belokhonov on Pexels.comThere were rules around which businesses qualified for these loans and restrictions on how much they could borrow. The required information was faked by thousands of applicants. Typically turnover numbers were falsified or businesses that were already bankrupt or in liquidation were presented as going concerns. The authorities are currently working their way through 2,767 criminal complaints, which could total CHF 307 million of fraudulently obtained loans, according to the State Economic Secretariat (SECO). So far 708 have
Topics:
Investec considers the following as important: Business & Economy, Editor's Choice, Personal finance
This could be interesting, too:
Investec writes Swiss National Bank to issue new money
Investec writes End of lifelong widows’ pensions moves closer to reality
Investec writes Swiss government deficit shrinks further
Investec writes Swiss government wants to invest more in bomb shelters
During the Covid pandemic, to reduce the risk of businesses failures, the Swiss government back stopped around CHF 17 billion of Covid loans granted to 138,000 businesses by 125 banks between 26 March and 31 July 2020.
There were rules around which businesses qualified for these loans and restrictions on how much they could borrow. The required information was faked by thousands of applicants. Typically turnover numbers were falsified or businesses that were already bankrupt or in liquidation were presented as going concerns.
The authorities are currently working their way through 2,767 criminal complaints, which could total CHF 307 million of fraudulently obtained loans, according to the State Economic Secretariat (SECO). So far 708 have been processed with a further 2,059 to complete. So far CHF 59 million has been classified as illegally obtained, with another possible further CHF 248 million, reported RTS. These figures represent the sums lent. How much of this will be recovered is uncertain.
In addition to these cases, a further 1,933 cases have been identified, which have so far not led to criminal proceedings. It is possible there are other cases of loans that should have never been made that have not been identified by one of the banks involved in the loan programme.
More on this:
RTS article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
For more stories like this on Switzerland follow us on Facebook and Twitter.