12-year sentence upheld for man who defrauded SIO

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

The High Appeals Court has upheld a 12-year prison sentence for a man convicted of defrauding the Social Insurance Organisation of over BD109,000.

The 20-year-old defendant, who was extradited from Saudi Arabia via Interpol, was also fined BD100,000 and ordered to forfeit the stolen funds.

The court’s decision follows a lengthy investigation into the defendant’s scheme, which involved the fraudulent employment of 17 women through his father’s contracting company.

The defendant, using forged documents and manipulated bank accounts, falsely registered the women with SIO, claiming they were employed with salaries of BD4,000 each.

After a period, he removed them from the system, claiming they had resigned, and subsequently collected their lumpsum social insurance payments.

The women involved testified that they had never signed employment contracts nor applied for the lump-sum payments.

They stated that the defendant had contacted them about job opportunities, but they had never actually worked for the company.

Some victims reported that the defendant had contacted them about funds mistakenly deposited into their accounts and then collected the money.

The investigation revealed that the defendant had used the stolen funds to engage in money laundering, depositing the money into accounts belonging to his sisters and his own.

After fleeing the country, he was nabbed by Saudi Arabian authorities in cooperation with Bahraini Interpol and subsequently extradited.

The defendant confessed to the crime during interrogation, admitting to forging employment contracts and manipulating the SIO online system.