The Syrian Central Agency for Financial Monitoring (CAFM), a regime apparatus, issued a report that the regime has continued to disburse pensions to around 40,000 deceased employees from Raqqa, causing a staggering loss of 3.5 billion Syrian pounds over three years.
According to the pro-regime Al-Watan newspaper, the salaries of around two-thirds of the government employees in Raqqa are no longer being paid, while the CAFM report indicates that around 3,000 employees out of a total of 9,000 are still collecting their pension.
The CAFM report also revealed cases of duplicate pension payments through Damascus and Raqqa offices. The CAFM also noted the increasing amount of pension payment in Aleppo although many of its residents have fled the country or died. According to Al-Watan, the scheme was uncovered when an heir of a pensioner submitted a complaint stating that unidentified recipients were taking his mother’s pension.
Several suspects were detained and interrogated, who confessed that some agents infiltrated a government office in Damascus and siphoned off the pensions of employees at state collectives.
The report stated that approximately four million Syrian pounds allocated for pension payment went missing in Homs, Raqqa, and Deir-ez-Zor.
An employee at the General Insurance Institution was recently arrested after being proven guilty of collecting pension of deceased employees and retirees who fled Syria because of the ongoing civil war. Later, the investigations revealed that the employee was part of a clandestine network of employees at several state-owned banks.
