Court Clears Employee of Theft and Forgery Charges in Gym Case

TDT | Manama

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The Lower Criminal Court has acquitted a 40-something Asian woman of misappropriating 418 Bahraini dinars from a well-known gym. The court found the employee not guilty of the charges, which included embezzlement and forgery related to membership fees.

Lawyer Zahida Sayed Ahmed, representing the defendant, argued that the charges were unfounded. She presented evidence from a forensic accountant's report demonstrating the absence of forgery and the lack of a material element for the forgery crime. She also argued that the accusation was malicious and that the defendant did not use any forged documents.

The Public Prosecution had accused the employee of embezzling funds entrusted to her during her employment at the gym during 2024 in the Northern Governorate. The charges also included forging membership records and using the forged documents, knowing they were fraudulent.

The case stemmed from a report alleging that the defendant and another employee, both employed at the gym for a year, had embezzled funds, with the defendant allegedly misappropriating 418 dinars and the other employee 627 dinars.

The alleged method involved directly receiving payments from clients without recording them in the gym's accounts and falsifying invoice numbers to conceal their actions.

The court noted that the other employee had been convicted of embezzlement by the High Appeals Court, a fact confirmed by reviewing the case file electronically. The court stated that the alteration of subscriber data to embezzle funds by the other employee was unrelated to the acquitted defendant.

The court further clarified that the other employee's actions of embezzling funds and recording false data in the membership records, even for clients whose transactions the acquitted defendant had handled, did not implicate the defendant in forgery.

The court reasoned that the defendant's entries in the membership register could have been accurate, while the other employee's entries were fraudulent, especially given the other employee's proven embezzlement. The court concluded by acquitting the defendant, citing Article 255 of the Criminal Procedure Code.