A clerk employed at a Dubai clinic has been sentenced to prison after a criminal court convicted her of forging electronic sick-leave certificates and helping private-sector employees obtain paid leave without undergoing medical examinations.
The Dubai Criminal Court also handed down prison sentences to several accomplices involved in the scheme, under which backdated medical certificates were issued in return for cash payments. The defendants were found guilty of offences including document forgery, breach of trust and corporate fraud.
The fraud came to light after a private company noticed an unusual increase in sudden and recurring sick leave among some of its employees. The certificates submitted by the workers carried digital stamps bearing the name of the same clinic, prompting the company's human resources department to conduct an internal investigation and report the matter to the authorities.
Dubai Police investigations revealed that the clinic clerk had colluded with employees of private companies to issue medical certificates without conducting the necessary examinations. She allegedly received payments ranging from several hundred dirhams to more than Dh1,000 for each certificate.
The clerk exploited the clinic's electronic health portal to generate backdated sick-leave documents and authenticate them using forged digital signatures attributed to doctors. The certificates enabled employees to take time off while continuing to receive their salaries, resulting in employers bearing the financial cost of absences that had no verified medical basis.
During the proceedings, the defence attempted to portray the incidents as administrative irregularities or unauthorised actions by employees. However, the court rejected these arguments, concluding that the defendants had deliberately falsified medical records and abused the clinic's electronic systems to facilitate the scheme.
The court imposed varying prison terms on the clerk and her accomplices. Expatriate defendants were also ordered to be deported after completing their sentences, while financial penalties and restitution orders were imposed.
The case highlights the legal and financial consequences of manipulating electronic medical records and issuing sick-leave certificates without proper medical assessments. It also underlines the responsibility of healthcare providers to safeguard their digital systems and ensure that medical documents are issued only through authorised procedures. Employers, meanwhile, face potential financial losses when fraudulent certificates are used to justify paid absences.
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