In February, the Norwegian Tax Administration raised the alarm. At the same time, the West Police District received a report. Hundreds of Somalis are under investigation for illegal tax deductions.
A man from Somalia with dual nationality has been remanded in custody in Bergen for four weeks, charged with serious tax fraud, reports Bergens Tidende.
The Somali man claims that another person completed his tax return for him. The police believe he also arranged for 13 other people to provide false information to the tax authorities. The accused man is then said to have received 400,000 kroner from those 13 people.
According to the court, the accused is alleged to have received money into his account a few days after the Norwegian Tax Administration had made payments to taxpayers based on false information.
The 13 individuals are said to have received tax deductions totalling nearly 15 million kroner. The Somali defendant claims that the money he received came from a savings scheme, but the court does not accept this explanation. According to the authorities, this case is merely the tip of the iceberg, and the case in Bergen has been triggered by a larger, targeted audit announced in February, according to Erik Nilsen, Head of Criminal Investigations at the Norwegian Tax Administration.
“In these audits, we have uncovered extensive and organised crime, and this is one of the Norwegian Tax Administration’s most serious audit cases in many years,” says Nilsen.
In total, the audits have so far uncovered incorrect tax deductions amounting to over 2 billion kroner. This means that around 500 million kroner in taxes remain unpaid. These funds will be reclaimed, with up to 60 per cent in additional tax. A large number of police reports are expected.
The Tax Administration refuses to comment on the ethnicity of the suspects. Nor will it confirm or deny that there are several hundred suspects.
There have been several similar cases involving Somalis. In the Netherlands, a Somali man was convicted in a similar case in 2016. This year, large-scale organised fraud schemes have been uncovered within the Somali community in Minnesota.
In Norway, there have for many years been suspicions of fraud involving NAV benefits paid to Somali women who register as single parents but who, in practice, remain married under Islamic law.
The issue came to public attention in earnest around 2010 and 2011 when NAV and the police carried out targeted operations. Over 100 Somali women were reported to the police after it was discovered that they had had children with their ‘ex-husband’ following their formal divorce, whilst receiving benefits as single parents.
In the most serious individual cases and operations, the fraud involved large sums per family, in some cases amounting to several hundred thousand kroner in undue benefits such as transitional allowance, child benefit and housing benefit.
Furthermore, immigrants from Somalia feature prominently in the statistics for other forms of crime as well. As of 1 January 2026, there were 44,000 immigrants and Norwegian-born individuals with immigrant parents from Somalia in Norway.
