Olot disassociates 1,300 people in one year for committing fraud

BarcelonaThe Olot City Council has expelled 1,300 people from the municipal register for committing fraud. This is the balance of the first year of operation of the office responsible for inspecting "suspicious" homes. The council, consulted by the ACN, explains that the two most common ways of trying to "deceive" the administration are, on the one hand, registering in Olot to enjoy some municipal services and aid, and on the other, "doing business". In this case, the Local Police are working in collaboration with the Mossos and the National Police to detect people who charge for registering immigrants in their homes. The City Council explains that they have found cases of up to eight people in the same dwelling, without anyone living there. The council warns that it "will continue to apply pressure".

The mayor, Agustí Arbós, explains that during the first year of the office's operation, they have carried out 700 inspections that have allowed them to detect 1,300 cases in which some type of irregularity has been confirmed. In this way, Arbós explains, all these people "who were committing fraud and, therefore, unbalancing the municipality's public resources" have been deregistered.

In this regard, the mayor points out that they have detected people who registered in a dwelling in the city but lived in another and only maintained their registration to access municipal aid and services. The second most recorded case of fraud is that of people who register many tenants – mostly immigrants – in their homes in exchange for money, even though they do not live there afterwards. "What we wanted was to order and tidy up this situation, because we had suspicions that there was fraud in the register, which is the gateway to the city's public services. Therefore, if there is fraud, it means that there are people accessing services they are not entitled to and people who should benefit from them and cannot," argues Arbós.

Furthermore, the mayor also revealed a clever trick that they had detected occasionally related to the register. In this case, it involved people who deregistered when there were calls related to public housing from the Generalitat. In this way, the family income that appeared decreased, and this could benefit the family. However, Arbós points out that it was detected quickly.

Unhappy with the registry law

The mayor of Olot, however, has shown himself to be particularly unhappy with some aspects contemplated by the census law, such as the obligation to register squatters. "It cannot be that we have to register squatters, but the law obliges us to. Therefore, we will follow the law, but we will do it for everyone and that means we have to catch those who commit fraud and they have to pay for it," he remarks. Finally, Arbós celebrates that other municipalities are following the same line as Olot because "it is necessary to order a situation that is very tense." The mayor describes the population growth experienced by the towns and cities of Catalonia as "unsustainable" and asks for it to be regulated.