The National Board and Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) has revealed that over 5,000 persons applied for government’s COVID-19 stimulus fund with fictitious documents.
The GH¢1 billion Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP) is meant to cushion small and medium scale businesses from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So far, a total of 450,000 persons have applied for the business support scheme, but it has emerged that 5,200 of the applicants presented fake details and personal data.
The NBSSI and the CAP Steering Committee are, therefore, taking steps to address all fraud-related cases before disbursing the fund.
The Executive Director of NBSSI, Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, said the security agencies have also began investigating the fraud cases.
“The online portal developed to receive applications has detected more than 5,200 fraud alerts representing multiple applications with same mobile money or bank account details,” she said at a press conference last Friday.
“For instance, we identified that one person registered for over 100 people in a community with the same documentation, mobile money contact or account number.
“And so what we did was to engage the services of KPMG, a tax consulting firm, to do a data analysis of the applications to help make the right decisions.”
Mrs. Yankey-Ayeh further stated that the inconsistencies have led to a postponement of the deadline for applications from June 20 to June 26, 2020.
“We had to give all concerns careful thought to arrive at the six-day extension. The grace period presents an opportunity to rectify complaints and errors of applicants with wrong credentials recorded on the digitalised application portal,” she added.
