In February, just over six months before the election, Minister of Housing and Deputy Minister of Labor Johan Danielsson (S) presented the initiative for regional centers against work crime. He spoke, among other things, about the fact that crime in the labor market today feeds on organized crime. With the help of the centers, “crime will be pushed back and the Swedish labor market will be cleaned up.”
Nine different authorities – including the Police, the Swedish Tax Agency and the Swedish Work Environment Authority – will sit together in the Police premises to work together against criminal forces in the labor market. They should detect tax evasion, money laundering, fraud and subsidy fraud. The first two centers will be started in Umeå and Gothenburg on 1 July.
Centers all over the country
● The regional centers against work-related crime will be located in Umeå, Gothenburg, Örebro, Uppsala, Norrköping, Stockholm, Malmö.
● Issues to be investigated include fraud with taxes and social security contributions, poor working environment, benefit fraud, money laundering and fraud.
● The Swedish Work Environment Authority coordinates the work. Other participating authorities are the Swedish Tax Agency, the Police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Swedish Public Employment Service, the Economic Crimes Authority, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, the Gender Equality Authority and the Swedish Migration Board.
Facts: The government
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Pia Bergman works as an expert on financial crime at the Swedish Tax Agency. In 2006–2018, she led the agency’s operational work against financial crime in connection with organized crime and has since worked against work-related crime.
She believes that it is unprofitable to start regional centers right now. The authorities must sit in the same premises, but there is a lot they are not allowed to talk to each other about without breaking the law. It all depends on confidentiality that stops certain exchange of information between authorities.
Pia Bergman gives an example: The Swedish Tax Agency receives a tip about a company that is suspected of using its staff, where salaries are paid black and where workers live in dilapidated dormitories.
– It can be undeclared work that is interesting to us at the Swedish Tax Agency, illegal personnel that can be interesting to both the Police and the Swedish Migration Board and work environment issues that are important to the Swedish Work Environment Authority. But we can not share that information. And the things we see in the field we can only, with certain exceptions, pass on to other authorities, she says.
You do not think there is any reason to sit together with the current conditions?
– Just because we enter the Police premises, the legislation will not change. We can not share more information anyway. Instead, we get a problem, that we overhear things that we should not know, she says.
It may be easier to talk to each other. A state inquiry into a strengthened exchange of information presented this summer may open up for less secrecy between authorities.
– But even if the investigation were for secrecy, it will take at least a year before we have the law in place. Still, you want a center now. I interpret it as meaning that you want to talk about being active and doing things, that you therefore create these centers before a change has taken place.
But responsible politicians have said the centers will solve major problems.
– There are elections in September. To me, this is whale pork. You do this too early and it depends on the choice, I am absolutely sure of that, says Pia Bergman.
Arne Alfredsson is head of the department for joint joint control at the Swedish Work Environment Authority, the authority that coordinates the work with the regional centers. Like Pia Bergman, he wants relief from secrecy.
– There is a strong desire to be able to exchange more information. The Swedish Tax Agency, for example, has a large amount of information about individuals and companies that would be interesting for us to take part in, he says.
At the same time, Arne Alfredsson believes that there are conditions for starting the regional centers.
– It’s time to get started now. The Government has been clear in its assignment that we must start from the secrecy rules that currently apply.
– We are also urging the authorities to review our own interpretation of the confidentiality regulations so that we really go to the bottom with whether there is an opportunity to go even further in the exchange of information within the current rules.
Minister of Housing and Deputy Minister of Labor Johan Danielsson says that today he cannot say how much the regional centers will cost, as it has not yet been decided how large the workforce will be.
Why should the authorities sit together when they cannot share important information?
– It is clear that the obstacles to secrecy are a problem for government cooperation against work-related crime and we have investigations aimed at removing these unjustified obstacles to secrecy. In parallel with the establishment of these centers, they have also been commissioned to develop methodological support for sharing as much information as possible within the framework of current legislation.
Is there not a risk that classified material will be shared?
– I have met the relevant authorities on several occasions since we gave the assignment. I do not feel that you see that it would be an obstacle so that you can not set up the centers, absolutely not.
Pia Bergman believes that the centers are started too early due to the election, how do you comment on that?
– We start these centers so that thousands of people are exploited and do badly in the Swedish labor market. Two centers will open before the summer and the other five will open next year. If you identify childhood diseases at the first centers, you do not need to repeat them at the others.
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