Courts | Former public hospital manager convicted of fraud

The Court of First Instance (TJB) has sentenced a former Macau public hospital manager to a suspended sentence of eighteen months for fraud, according to media reports.
Rui Vasconcelos e Sá, who was part of the hospital’s management team and also served as a pharmacist, was accused of fraud after having requested and used  false prescriptions, resulting in his swindling Macau’s administration out of MOP139,000. He was also accused of unjustified absences from work.
The local newspapers have reported that the case went to trial a week ago, but the acts in question date back to between May 2011 and April 2012.
The ruling stated that Mr Sá had left Macau 68 times between 2006 and 2011 during his working hours. However, he had allegedly signed attendance shifts.
Furthermore, the court also found that Mr Sá had been able to obtain hundreds of drugs with which to treat chronic diseases. These drugs required medical prescriptions, which were provided by surgeons Rui Furtado and António Martins. Newspaper Ponto Final quoted the Health Bureau as saying that the two surgeons had not been not under investigation because at the time “they had not breached any [internal] rule,” while also acknowledging it was uncommon to write prescriptions without communicating with the patients in person.
Through the scheme, Mr Sá had also booked several false external medical appointments, using the names of two Portuguese nationals holding Macau permanent IDs.
The court found that Mr Sá was also frequently absent from work, and often travelled to mainland China, Shanghai and Thailand.
According to the court ruling, he was absent from work for a total of 68 days during his working hours and still received a MOP93,488 salary.
The one year and six month sentence is to be suspended if Mr Sá pays MOP232,000 in compensation to the Health Bureau within the next 30 days.
Rui Sá is a Portuguese citizen born in Angola. He currently lives in Portugal and works in the medical and pharmaceutical field.