Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson has called for a census, claiming Sweden’s left-wing government has no idea who is actually living in the country.
The demand for a new census comes after it was revealed that a senior official in the Afghan government, 43-year-old Fazel Fazly, has been collecting parental welfate despite not living in Sweden.
“We don’t know which people are in the country,” Kristersson said this week, newspaper Aftonbladet reports.
“This is the second time we have seen it at this spectacular level, which is bad enough. One wonders how many more cases there are, which are not government officials or defence ministers. I think this is incredibly serious,” he added.
Last year, it was revealed another foreign senior government official, former Iraqi defence minister Najah al-Shammari, who is a dual Iraqi and Swedish citizen, had also illegally taken money from Swedish taxpayers.
“It is very demoralising for all people who know that there is a connection between working in Sweden, paying taxes, and receiving benefits. I think it’s incredibly harmful that others then sit abroad and just pick the raisins out of the cake,” Kristersson said.
According to Aftonbladet, the last time Sweden undertook a census was 30 years ago in 1990, and the Swedish Tax Agency believes as many as 200,000 to 300,000 Swedes live at different addresses to those recorded.
A lack of awareness of who is resident in the country has even led to Sweden paying out cash to Islamic State radicals after they had travelled overseas to fight for the terror group in Syria and Iraq.
Earlier this week it was also revealed that the Swedish government had paid 1.2 billion Swedish kronor (£104,136,000/$137,400,000) to radical Islamic groups, mainly through the funding of Islamic educational projects and schools.