The home office has initiated an investigation into claims that some refuge seekers can use payment cards, which are meant to buy necessary food for gambling.
Freedom of information request by Pavlightshom In the last one year, more than 6,500 payments were detected in gambling settings by asylum seekers.
The payment was made on the aspen card, given by the house office to the shelter seekers, which was waiting for the decision to allow them to purchase basic items with small weekly top-ups.
A spokesperson of the home office said that they were looking at the transaction and if a card was misused, immediate action would be taken.
When the shelter seekers come for the first time, they usually put a completely completely in catering hotels-and their aspen cards are given £ 9.95 a week, when they go to self-catering housing, it increases to £ 49.18 a week.
However, instead of purchasing the requirements, some refuge seekers have successfully used chip and pin aspen card to gamble on physical sites such as casino, slot machine arcade and national lottery retailers.
An attempt was made to gamble online using the card, but was blocked each time, and in some cases, cash withdrawals in gambling sites located using the ID number of the terminal.
FOI showed a peak of 227 attempts to use the card for gambling in a week last November and was the lowest effort in a week last July.
Chris Filp, the home secretary of the conservative shadow, said that it was wrong for those who want to listen to gambling using taxpayers’ cash, “This is the end of madness.”
The UK currently has around 80,000 aspen card users and has strict control and limitations on their use.
The BBC understands that action will be taken to ensure that physical gambling is not possible in the future.
A spokesperson of the home office said: “The home office has started checking the use of aspen card.
“The house office has a legal obligation to support the shelter seekers, including any dependents who would otherwise be destitute.”
According to the latest annual data, Overall benefit fraud The cost of £ 7.4bn in the UK last year was about 2.8% of the total welfare expenses.
