Health Ministry staff accused of embezzling BD111,000

The High Criminal Court yesterday began hearing the case of a Ministry of Health coordinator accused of pocketing BD111,000 by manipulating a public hospital’s accounts.

The defendant was present at the court hearing yesterday, where she pleaded not guilty to embezzlement and forgery charges. The defendant was reportedly serving in the maternity ward in Jidhafs Hospital and she was coordinating the medical appointments for pregnant women. She was allegedly responsible for collecting the money the special ward was making from deliveries and admission in the years between the years 2011-2014.

The hospital at that time didn’t have a computer system to record the incomes, but an auditor of the ministry noticed a huge gap in the revenues of the hospital, casting doubts on the money being embezzled or lost. Therefore, a thorough auditing of the invoices written by hand was performed and it was discovered that there was more than BD100,000 difference between the real revenues and the money handed over to the ministry.

“We discovered that the defendant was assigned to record the money received from the deliveries as well as the admissions and staying in the hospital and to hand over them to the ministry’s representative. She didn’t record the big amounts collected from deliveries on many occasions, and she didn’t note down the invoice number series.