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Journalism of Courage
While most may receive a pay cut for missing work for a few days, a hospital staff in Italy managed to do something unbelievable — get paid despite being absent for 15 years! Now, the public sector worker is going viral as he is being dubbed as the “king of absentees” by the Italian press.
The employee of the Pugliese Ciaccio hospital in the Calabrian city of Catanzaro is now facing criminal charges for duping the system frivolously earning a huge sum of money.
According to a local report by La Stampa, the investigations led to the registration of a case against seven suspects involved in the scam, which includes various employees, officials and managers at the hospital, who have been “accused of abuse of office, forgery and aggravated extortion.”
According to the report, the investigations conducted by the Economic-Financial Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Catanzaro made it possible to detect the man, identified as Salvatore Scumace. In 2005, he was employed by the hospital when he was assigned to the Fire Emergency Operations Center (Coei) of the Catanzaro hospital. Since then he was reportedly paid €538,000 in total over the years he skipped work, the police revealed.
The arrests are the result of a lengthy police investigation into absenteeism and suspected fraud in the Italian public sector, BBC reported. In 2005, the man is alleged to have made threats against the hospital director to stop her from filing a disciplinary report over his absenteeism.
In an investigation codenamed ‘Part Time’, the police gathered their evidence from attendance and salary records as well as witness statements from colleagues, The Guardian said. The authorities explained that as the director had retired and the man’s absenteeism continued unabated because his attendance was never checked by the director’s successor or the human resources department.
