In a report, the police have mapped the situation at HVB homes in the country. There it appears that several homes are run by people with connections to organized crime. But also that several homes are staffed by members of criminal networks.
– Serious criminal activity has eaten into the business, says Peter Allheim, commissioner at the police’s National Operative Department (Noa) in SVT’s Aktuellt and elaborates:
– We can see in the mapping that network criminals are present in all structures in HVB’s operations – everything from ownership to managers, staff and other people who move in and around HVB.
“Unacceptable”
Social Services Minister Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M) says she is going “insane” over the report:
– It is completely unacceptable that criminals penetrate various parts of welfare and that it is Swedish tax money that pays for it.
– But what makes me even more insane is the fact that it’s about community care, especially vulnerable children and young people who should feel safe are instead being exploited.
Businesses that operate from home and mismanage their work must be closed down, according to Grönwall.
She says that the government wants to overcome the problem by, among other things, breaking certain confidentiality rules – so the right information can be transferred between different actors and authorities. They also want the Inspectorate for Care and Care (Ivo) as an authority to be given the right resources to be able to deal with the problem.
Known from before
Sara Persson at the Ecocrime Authority says in Aktuellt that HVB operations run under criminal auspices are “extremely serious” – but something that was already known to the authority.
She emphasizes that the problem is not only limited to HVB homes, but that it is something that can be seen in the entire welfare system:
– These are things we have raised before, together with the police in various situational pictures and reports, but it is great that this report shows this financial crime that we are looking at.
See a longer interview with Sara Persson in the video below.
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Hear Sara Persson, crime prevention specialist at the Ecocrime Authority, about what needs to be done to protect HVB homes against organized and financial crime. Photo: SVT
Thousands of escapes last year
Between January and November, the previous year, 2,865 escapes and deviations from Sis or HVB homes came to the attention of the police, it is stated in the press release on Monday. It also calculates that every tenth deviation leads to a serious violent crime.