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A manager who cost five janitors their jobs after submitting resignation letters in their names and affixing their electronic signatures without consent has had his sentence reduced to three years in prison, with the fine lowered to BD3,000.
In April, the 41-year-old Kenyan was sentenced to five years in prison and fined BD5,000 by the High Criminal Court for forgery.
He then lodged an objection, stating that the ruling was issued in absentia.
The court heard that a ministry had contracted the company where the defendant worked to provide cleaning services for its buildings, to which the five Bahraini janitors aged between 24 and 41 were assigned.
According to court documents, the defendant obtained signatures from the men through deception, which were then used on official company documents. He collaborated with a well-intentioned public employee to enter false information into a government digital database and submitted the fabricated resignation letters as genuine.
Additionally, he used the letters with the signatures despite knowing that the documents were fraudulent.
The victims claimed that the defendant asked them to digitally sign a letter written in English, which they could not read, without informing them that it was a resignation letter.
During a hearing held earlier this month, a 27-year-old victim said that he worked as a janitor for the company at the ministry’s premises, when in December 2024, he was informed that his contract with the ministry had come to an end.
He, along with the other victims, were then asked by one of the company managers to return to headquarters for a change in assignment.
When they reached the headquarters, they were asked to enter the defendant’s office individually. The Kenyan defendant told them that they would receive a message on WhatsApp and asked them to tell him the code in the message.
Since none of the victims could speak English and there were no translators present, they did not understand the contents of the message, but they gave the defendant the code.
Later they discovered that they had actually ended up signing resignation letters, and quitting their jobs without agreeing to it, or even knowing about it.
It later turned out that the defendant used the codes to place electronic signatures on the letters.
All the men found themselves unemployed without being given any of the outstanding payments they were entitled to. They remain jobless to this day.
One victim told the judges that the manager misled him by saying that the message was related to their timesheets.
An employee from the ministry later testified that the victims were contracted through a tender process for eight months, and that they were on open-ended contracts. After the expiry of the contractual period, the ministry notified the workers that they should contact their company to discuss their situation.
Last month, the High Criminal Court sentenced the defendant to five years in prison and fined BD5,000.
The defendant, however, filed an objection stating that he was not present at the initial trial. He was granted a chance to defend himself and was not arrested.
On Sunday, the Kenyan had both his fine and sentence reduced by the High Criminal Court. He will be deported upon the completion of his sentence.
nader@gdnmedia.bh
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