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The entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland

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Over recent decades, the U.S. Justice Department has reportedly figured out a way to get accused Nazi war criminals to leave the country: Offer them Social Security payments.

Or so says an Associated Press investigative report out Sunday, which details how millions of dollars in Social Security benefits have been sent abroad to pay several dozen of suspects accused of taking part in the Holocaust and other Nazi war atrocities.

Since 1979, at least 38 out of 66 alleged war criminals removed from the U.S. were allowed to keep their benefits, often as an inducement to agree to accept deportation or simply flee the country, the report said. Many of the recipients were never prosecuted in their new domiciles, it said.

“The Justice Department denied using Social Security payments as a tool for removing Nazi suspects. But records show the U.S. State Department and the Social Security Administration voiced grave concerns over the methods used by the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations,” the report said.

“State officials derogatorily called the practice ‘Nazi dumping’ and claimed the OSI was bargaining with suspects so they would leave voluntarily,” it said.

The report said that the OSI also helped quash legislation in the 1990s that would have closed the loophole allowing the suspects to hold on to their Social Security. At least four alleged war criminals are still receiving money from the Social Security Administration, the report said.

— Michael Kitchen

Follow @KitchenNews