French COVID Aid Fraud Scheme Leads to Convictions, Money Laundered in Morocco

The first individual was sentenced to five years in prison with a ban on exercising a commercial or industrial profession and on managing a company, said Dominique Laurens, the public prosecutor of the Marseille court. The defendant had been arrested as part of a judicial investigation opened on October 6, 2020 for "fraud and money laundering in an organized gang to the detriment of the State".

As for the second, he was sentenced to six months in prison, in the form of house arrest, and to pay a fine of 5,000 euros. The court also sentenced a company to pay a fine of 60,000 euros and ordered the freezing of 130,000 euros of its assets as well as the seizure of one of its vehicles.

The two individuals and the company involved had produced false partial unemployment declarations to obtain several hundred thousand euros in aid from the State, which they had transferred to Morocco, France, Germany and Belgium to be laundered.