"Under this regulation, 99 people were stripped of pensions", Jarmila Schneider said at a press briefing, adding the ministry did not know "how well the checks were done on pension requests made before 1997".
Schneider said Germany had amended the Federal War Victims Relief Act (BVG) in 1997 to exclude recipients with a record of wartime violations of humanity and rule of law principles, and it was up to federal states to run checks on them.
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The Labour Ministry said on 20 February that the state of North Rhine-Westphalia was responsible for paying pensions to World War II victims in Belgium. It denied that any recipients were formerly with the Waffen-SS armed unit of the Nazi Party.