Court upholds accountant’s five-year sentence for pocketing academy trainee fees

The High Criminal Court of Appeal has upheld the conviction of a senior accountant for embezzling trainee fees intended for the Gulf Aviation Academy. The former financial controller was sentenced to five years in prison after diverting the academy’s funds into his personal account. In addition to the jail term, he was fined BD41,777.759 and ordered to repay an equivalent amount to the institution. Civil claim The civil claim has been passed on to the appropriate court.

He worked at the academy between January 2021 and April 2022. During that time, he transferred BD45,121 into his own bank account. The money should have gone to the academy. It had been paid by trainees. Transaction fees To pull it off, he fiddled with transaction dates, left out bank entries, and altered records in the academy’s IT system.

Reconciliation reports were doctored, sometimes using different formats, which made it harder to trace the missing money. He later resigned. But his exit didn’t go unnoticed for long. A complaint landed with the General Directorate of Anti-Corruption and Economic and Electronic Security. Statements The matter was passed to the Financial Crimes and Money Laundering Prosecution, which began taking statements from academy staff and digging through the paperwork.

It was enough to bring charges. Among those questioned was the academy’s head of financial management and bank accounts. Shesaid her department had just two staff at the time — the defendant, who served as the senior accountant, and another employee who worked as an accounts coordinator. The latter had been tasked with preparing the secondary financial plan for 2022. In practice, this meant that day-to-day matters were left to the defendant.

She once asked him how the monthly reconciliations were done. He replied that the coordinator prepared the figures and he simply signed them off. She tried to review the reconciliation for December 2021, but never managed it. Signature Still, she noticed that both her own signature and his were on the report. She went on leave after finalising the annual plan. Investigators later found that he had tampered with the digital records, apparently trying to cover his tracks. Civil proceedings to retrieve the funds are now in motion.