FOUR people who embezzled Social Insurance Organisation (SIO) benefits by fabricating 55 employment contracts have had their sentences reduced on appeal.
The appellants included two men, who operated two bogus advertising companies under which the contracts were created, and two women who signed on as fake employees.
The women managed to claim more than BD6,000 in unlawfully-awarded SIO benefits through a lump sum ‘one-time payment request’ to cash out their employment insurance.
In October, the High Criminal Court found the group’s leader, a 41-year-old Bahraini man, guilty of forgery and fraud. The original case involved five suspects, but the fifth female defendant did not lodge an appeal.
The 41-year-old was sentenced to five years in prison, but appeals judges reduced the penalty to three years, while his 53-year-old male accomplice’s sentence was lowered from three years in prison to one year.
They were earlier fined BD10,000 and BD5,000 respectively, and the appeals court upheld these fines.
Meanwhile, the women had been sentenced to three months behind bars and fined BD1,000 each. Although the court upheld the penalty, it ruled to suspend their sentences for three years, effective on the day of the verdict.
The fifth defendant in the original case did not contest the verdict because she had received a suspended prison sentence in the original ruling.
She was granted the suspension because she repaid BD1,890 in unemployment aid to the organisation three days after the trial began, according to a letter submitted to the court by the SIO.
The GDN earlier reported that the men set up the operation which enabled the women to receive unearned benefits. The men themselves defrauded the SIO of BD3,200.
The 41-year-old defendant was convicted of intentionally entering false information into the SIO’s website, by submitting 55 bogus contracts, complete with fake salaries for job roles they were not occupying, including the three female co-defendants.
The 53-year-old was found guilty of supplying his accomplice with the forged work contracts, populated with false data, with the purpose of completing employment procedures to enable the bogus insurees to gain access to benefits.
The women, aged 30 and 32, were accused of cashing out BD830 and BD480 one-time payments from the SIO, respectively, based on years of employment counted in their favour, that they did not actually serve.
The 31-year-old, who was not among the appellants, was also awarded BD1,890 in unemployment aid.
Although court documents stated that the Bahraini men were in some capacity responsible for the operations of the companies, records on the Sijilat commercial registration (CR) platform show that they did not own the companies, nor were official signatories thereof.
The majority of the shares of the two publicity and advertising firms were owned by a Pakistani citizen, while 12 other shareholders from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India each owned a small percentage of the shares.
The terms of lump sum compensation are dictated in the 1976 Social Insurance Law, which has been amended over the years to include new categories and to be more up to date with social trends.
Insurees eligible for a lump sum compensation are those who do not qualify for a pension. They must be in at least one of these categories: men over 60, women over 55, women who are either married, divorced or widowed, individuals who have become totally disabled, and those who have permanently left the country.
Other categories include people who have received a prison sentence of 10 years or longer, if five years have elapsed since their employment ended, if they are beneficiaries in another insurance system, or if they have been running a business for one year since their employment ended.
In the case of death, the heirs of the deceased may claim a one-time payment.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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