The Social Security online ‘list of shame’ has gone live today after a break of three years.
The list will be released in three stages with a full account of debtors online by the year end available for anyone to look at.
The first phase shows 1,798 defaulting taxpayers.
The Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security relaunched the list of debtors as part of a wider government plan to combat fraud and non-payment of social security contributions and "aims to promote transparency and increase efficiency in the recovery of contributory debts."
The list is available on the Social Security website with the first stage of the operation showing only individuals with debts of more than €25,000 and businesses with debts of over €50,000.
The 1,798 debtors, 589 individuals and 1,209 companies, account for a total debt of about €203 million.
The second stage of for business debts between €10,000 and €50,000 and the third stage is for individuals who owe between €750 and €25,000 to the state
Debtors at any timer can rectify the situation by paying off their debts. The state then will drop their names on subsequent postings. The ministry said the list of debtors will be updated and that the update process is dynamic.
Se we now know that Fernando Columbano da Silva, Natália dos Anjos Oliveira de Amorim, and José Manuel Moreira de Campos each owe the state between €250,000 and €1 million in social security payments, according to the Social Security department's records anyway.
It does not take a criminal mastermind now to look up the names of high value debtors and find their home addresses. 'Transparency' it seems, comes with attendant risks to debtors.
http://www.seg-social.pt/lista-de-devedores-na-seguranca-social
