There are strong indications that one of the call centers set up by the Flemish authorities for contact tracing has been invoicing for nearly a year for services that have not taken place, the newspaper Het indicates in the evening. Laatste Nieuws. The Flemish Health and Care agency will file a complaint.
Mifratel, a subsidiary of Yource which collaborates with five other companies for the follow-up of contacts in Flanders, would have systematically left work as contact followers on other projects but would have billed the services to the Flemish government. About forty of these tracers have been connected every day since March on the online contact tracing platform but were carrying out other missions.
The authorities pay 41.63 euros an hour for a contact investigator. These forty people total thousands of hours and the amount could exceed one million euros. Parent company Yource says it will check everything and refund the amount “if it was billed incorrectly.”
The agency files a complaint after the publication of the article in the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws where it is question of a possible fraud at a subsidiary of Yource. Collaboration with the company was immediately stopped and an external audit was ordered for the other companies in the consortium. “We want to thoroughly investigate Yource’s way of working and false invoices in court and, if the suspicion of fraud is confirmed, recover all false invoice payments,” said Dirk Dewolf, Managing Director of the Health and Care agency.
Mifratel, a subsidiary of Yource which collaborates with five other companies for the follow-up of contacts in Flanders, would have systematically allowed contact followers to work on other projects but would have invoiced the services to the Flemish government. About forty of these tracers have been connected every day since March on the online contact tracing platform but were carrying out other missions. The authorities pay 41.63 euros an hour for a contact investigator. These forty people total thousands of hours and the amount could exceed one million euros. The parent company Yource says it will check everything and refund the amount “if it was billed incorrectly.” The agency filed a complaint after the publication of the article in the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws where there is talk of a possible fraud at a Yource subsidiary. Collaboration with the company was immediately stopped and an external audit was ordered for the other companies in the consortium. “We want to thoroughly investigate Yource’s way of working and false invoices in court and, if the suspicion of fraud is confirmed, recover all false invoice payments,” said Dirk Dewolf, Managing Director of the Health and Care agency.
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