Government's scheme to subsidize salaries during the coronavirus crisis was abused by 27 percent of businesses which received this aid, state agency Hina cited the Jutarnji List daily in their summary of Jutarnji List's article published on Thursday.

According to Jutarnji List, the most common form of abuse was by applying for subsidies while their workers were on sick leave. Employers found to have abused the scheme had to pay back the funds to the state employment bureau which was put in charge of distributing salary subsidies.

Based on inspections of contracts, signed between employers and the employment bureau, 31,552 employers had to later pay back 333 million kuna (€44 million) in subsidies. This accounts for only 2.8 percent of the 11.95 billion kuna (€1.6 billion) the government spent on helping businesses fund salaries. Some 708,000 employees were covered with this scheme, and the support was paid to more than 115,000 companies of various sizes.

“This means that 27 percent of employers had to pay back the subsidy,” Hina cited Jutarnji as saying.

(€1 = 7.52 kuna)