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A 70-year-old business owner sentenced to a year in prison for forging a former employee’s signature on a contract, to make it appear as if he was working full time at his company, has appealed against his sentence.
The young man, who was fired after three months at the suspect’s company for ‘not being suitable for the job’, had been officially designated as employed, without his knowledge.
He testified that he only found out about his so-called job when he visited the Social Insurance Organisation (SIO) to request unemployment benefits, only to find he was ineligible.
The 25-year-old said that he also lost access to his late father’s pension because he was registered with the SIO as a driver on a BD300 monthly salary, with an open-ended contract.
The elderly owner of the cargo handling company was found guilty this month of falsifying a signature on the contract, and then submitting it to the SIO and the Labour Ministry, with knowledge that it is false.
The High Criminal Court sentenced him to a year in prison, ordered to confiscate the documents with the forged signatures, and granted the victim his request to sue the man for damages in the civil courts.
The elderly man has now taken to the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court to contest the verdict, with his lawyer asking judges to replace the incarceration with an alternative penalty like community service.
“Just because the appellant is the owner of the establishment, whose eKey was used to submit contract on the SIO’s website, does not mean that he possessed criminal intent,” read the deference memo.
“The appellant heads a company with various employees and a lot of paperwork. Submitting contracts to government systems and registering employees is done by the human resources (HR) department, and not the appellant himself – he signed the contract as part of routine paperwork.
“Since the account belonged to the company, the responsibility fell on its owner by default, but there is no proof that he actually did it, and that he committed the act with awareness and intention.
“To prove he intended to commit the crime requires evidence that he aimed to alter a fact into a falsehood.”
The attorney went on to give an example of the additional proof; the prosecution could have presented the IP address from which the online activity stemmed.
The GDN previously reported that the incident took place in 2022, when the appellant was 66 and the victim was 21.
The former employee testified that he went to the Labour Ministry to apply for unemployment assistance, but it appeared that he was insured under a company.
He said: “I missed out on unemployment benefits and also my dad’s retirement salary.”
Meanwhile, the suspect’s attorney previously stated that the appellant did not know the victim because more than 150 people worked for his company.
Judges set September 27 as the date a verdict will be issued in the appeal.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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