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An appeals court has upheld the guilt of a Health Ministry administrative worker, who forged a medical report to help a man with sickle cell disease go into disability-related retirement and receive benefits.
Last month, the High Criminal Court yesterday sentenced the Bahraini woman to a year in prison and fined her BD1,000 for using her position as a public sector employee to falsify government records.
The 32-year-old civil servant appealed the ruling at the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court, but judges rejected her appeal.
According to the initial verdict, the appellant forged a document attributed to the ministry’s Medical Commission, then uploaded it to the ministry’s digital system, iSeha.
The medical evaluation outlined the patient’s medical condition, explained how it prevented him from working and gave recommendations on what accommodations he should be provided.
The woman had managed to acquire the signatures of physicians from the committee, who she made sign the paper on false premises, in order to lend it legitimacy.
She reportedly submitted the document to the Social Insurance Organisation (SIO) to allow the sickle cell disease patient to go into early retirement, so he could eventually receive a pension.
A colleague of the appellant earlier recounted the circumstances of the forgery during Public Prosecution questioning, stating that the commission had met in March to review cases to do with sickle cell disease.
The 31-year-old Bahraini testified that the individual, whose name is on the report, was to present before the commission so his case could be discussed, but was a no-show.
“I set his papers to one side so we could reschedule his appointment and I documented all the verdicts issued during the session,” the appellant’s co-worker stated.
“I went on iSeha to file the day’s verdicts, where I saw a report concerning the man, even though he wasn’t seen by the commission on that day.”
The ministry employee reported the incident, and a committee was formed to investigate the allegations. It soon appeared that the suspicious report was emailed to the SIO as part of a disability retirement request.
An IT specialist was tasked with extracting all messages sent by people working for the Commission, and was able to recover the woman’s deleted emails.
The Bahraini IT expert then zeroed in on the computer from which the report was sent to the SIO, and even ascertained the model of the phone that was used to scan the document, as the suspect had not removed metadata from the file.
Confronted with evidence, the woman admitted to forging the Commission report, and recounted in detail how she falsified it.
An SIO official testified that the report was received, and the man’s request to retire for medical reasons was accepted, though no pension was paid out.
On top of jail time, judges ruled to confiscate the phone that was used to snap a photo of the report, with prosecutors referring to the mobile as ‘the tool of the crime’.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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