Retirees in Morocco: beware, France is tightening controls!

The French government is making the fight against tax, social and customs fraud a priority. When presenting the assessment of the anti-fraud plan launched in May 2023, Gabriel Attal unveiled the new mechanisms put in place, including those concerning the control of retirees. In just under a year, the Retirement Insurance, which manages the basic pension of more than 15 million retirees, was able to detect nearly 200 million euros in damages.

They number 1.2 million, these retirees living abroad and receiving a French pension. For several years, they have been required to send the certificate of life every year, a document proving the existence of a retiree receiving a French pension and living abroad. This document is then checked by a competent authority such as an embassy or a police station. To limit the risk of fraud in countries like Morocco or Algeria where France does not have direct information to verify whether the retiree receiving a pension is still alive, the Retirement Insurance has set up a partnership with an Algerian bank and the Moroccan pension fund.

Still in the same dynamic, the French government wants to extend the control of centenarians to those over 85 by 2027, in countries where there is no civil status exchange with France, and this, after an experiment in Algeria which was a success. Out of 1,000 retirees over 98 years old summoned, 30% of them did not show up, according to figures from Bercy. As a result, the retirement insurance cut their pension. "These checks will be carried out through trusted third parties who can be, depending on the country, a banking network, a local administration, the French consular network..." lists the organization.

The control will consist of summoning the retiree to a physical counter to verify the authenticity of their identity documents. "In case of non-attendance at the appointment or non-compliance of the documents, the payment of the pension is suspended," Capital reports. It will also be a question of verifying that the pension is paid to the right retiree. Thus, the Retirement Insurance will have access by the end of June to the French Bank Account File (Ficoba), a device that lists all bank accounts opened in France (current accounts, savings accounts, securities accounts...) and which is managed by the Directorate General of Public Finance (the tax authorities). The organization will specify that the opening of this device will allow the pension fund to access in real time the administrative data (account number and name of the account holder) and thus "verify the validity of the bank details provided by the retirees for the payment of their pension".