Subject: NTA audit in a limited company supervised by the Ministry of Health, regarding the authenticity of an employee’s certificate of seniority, with the contribution of which he was ranked first in the merit list of his institution, occupying the only job position published for his professional specialty.
On the basis of a letter from the President of a public limited company, supervised by the Ministry of Health, and with a view to highlighting the defective recruitment procedure of an employee, the NTA carried out an audit to confirm the authenticity of the employee's seniority certificate, which had been submitted to the institution for the purpose of establishing his/her seniority.
During the audit, it was found that, in the context of a vacancy notice supervised by the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection (ASEP), the employee had submitted to the Recruitment Office, as documentary evidence of experience, a copy of a previous experience certificate, which resulted in him/her being ranked first in the evaluation index, thus occupying the only professional position published for his/ her professional speciality, while other candidate were following him/her in the evaluation ranking.
It is noted that the certificate’s authenticity has not been confirmed as to its date of issue.
In particular:
As it emerged from the audit, the certificate submitted as part of the tender procedure bears a different (earlier) date than the date of issue, as it appears that an external intervention has eliminated a number in the date of issue.
The date of certificate issue was later than the deadline for submitting it according to the tender procedure.
In addition, an employee of another public body, certified the authenticity of the certificate copy in question, with a date earlier than the actual date of issue, with the result that the fake certificate of service duration was submitted to the body, as regards the date of issue, in order to be submitted within the deadline of the call for applications notice.
In the end, the employee, with the contribution of the weighting of the abovementioned length of service, was placed first on the evaluation index, thus occupying the only post published for his/her professional speciality, followed by other candidates on the index.
In conclusion, without the above credits/scores, the recruitment of the official in question would not have proceeded and another candidate would have been recruited.
Following the above audit, the NTA forwarded the Report to the competent Public Prosecutor for criminal assessment and recommended to the Management of the Public Limited Company, supervised by the Ministry of Health, based on its Internal Regulations, to conduct a preliminary investigation in order to establish the commission of disciplinary offences, the summoning of the employee to a prior hearing in accordance with the applicable provisions and, if violations are found, the possible termination of the employee's employment contract.
Furthermore, it was proposed to the Institution, to proceed to the authenticity verification of the educational qualifications/diplomas submitted by the employee and to repeat the verification of the classification, as regards the ranking of the seniority of all the employees hired under the same aforementioned notice.