UK gov't loses blns to fraud, corruption

The United Kingdom (UK) government is estimated to have lost up to 44.9 billion British pounds (56 billion U.S. dollars) to fraud and corruption in 2022, a report published by lawmakers revealed on Friday.

"The Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) does not have specific estimates for two-thirds of government expenditure, but estimates that fraud and error levels for that expenditure is somewhere between 0.5 percent and 5 percent," the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons said in its report.

"This implies that, in addition to the estimated 10 billion pounds of tax fraud and 6.4 billion pounds of benefit fraud lost in 2022-23, the government also lost somewhere between 2.5 billion pounds to 28.5 billion pounds to fraud and error -- without knowing exactly where or how," it said.

The report warned that, for the most part, the government's current system of fraud measurement does not know where the problems are, or which public bodies are most affected.

To address such levels of uncertainty, the committee has called for an annual strategic intelligence report on fraud and corruption levels across the government. (1 British pound = 1.25 U.S. dollars) ■