The Citizenship Income has been the subject of extensive institutional debate and particular media attention, including on the occasion of verifications of ascertained cases of undue perception of the same.
The control system is particularly complex also due to the number of Administrations involved and the timing to be respected for verifying the requirements, when submitting the application. In the initial implementation phase, in compliance with the regulatory provisions, INPS has implemented a system of centralized controls on the existence of the requirements established by law, supported by ex post checks by the territorial offices on the truthfulness of the declarations.
Following the application evolution of the measure, INPS has intensified ex ante controls with a view to preventing and identifying opportunistic and fraudulent behaviour. Therefore, the control system has been progressively strengthened with the aim of ascertaining the truthfulness of the declarations made, verifying in advance the information held by INPS and other public administrations, and anticipating the controls also from an "anti-fraud" perspective. Furthermore, predefined "potential risk" scenarios were identified by cross-referencing the declarations present in the CI applications and in the related Single Substitute Declarations with the data and information present in its archives.
This made it possible to intercept the symptomatic instances of the alleged non-existence of one or more requirements for the applicant (or the family) and other potentially incompatible situations and to promptly adopt the consequent rejection measures, anticipating this verification at the time of presentation of the questions, a choice implemented and now regulated by a specific law (art. 74, paragraph 4 ter, of Law no. 234/2021 - Budget Law 2022).
In particular, the main risk scenarios concern:
- lack of residence requirement in Italy;
- false or omitted declarations regarding the working position of family members;
- false statements about the composition of the family nucleus.
When the INPS systems detect applications that present the risk indicators just mentioned, the applications are immediately rejected by the procedure that manages the measure, or suspended in cases where further investigations are necessary, always in advance of the payment of the benefit.
The risk scenarios developed and the related alarms activated by the Institute made it possible to identify over 1.290.000 at risk out of approximately 2022 applications received in the first ten months of 290.000: 240.000, falling under scenarios nos. 1 and 2, were automatically rejected, before the benefit could be unduly received; 50.000 were suspended and subjected to further checks.
The effectiveness of the controls put in place by the Institute is proven by the data shown in the attached table which shows the number of applications rejected, lapsed and revoked as at 30 September 2022.
Another risk scenario that the Institute has recently been using, in close collaboration with the police, is that relating to the possible ownership of businesses and/or qualifications/social positions by the members of the family unit requesting the benefit. In fact, this circumstance, although not in itself incompatible with the use of the RdC benefit, is considered symptomatic of potential frauds in any case connected to the use of the Citizenship Income or to irregularities concerning the business sector, such as, for example, those of "nominees ” in the ownership of the same. Requests attributable to this scenario are also intercepted and subjected to further checks.
Finally, for homogeneity and organic control, INPS has developed a special IT platform that allows the peripheral Structures to consult the RdC requests that present the selected risk indices, so as to be able to carry out the appropriate checks on the suspended applications and unblock their outcome, if positive, or initiate the consequent recovery actions, if not.
The risk scenarios elaborated allow the Institute to activate constant synergies with the forces of order, in the wake of the maximum collaboration between the administrations, inspired by a strengthened protection of legality, to reconcile social inclusion, within the limits of the real needs to be protect, and the control and containment of public spending.