Rabat - An official from Ministry of Health and a middleman have allegedly been charged for their involvement in a pay-to-play scheme, where promised dozens of unemployed people were offered jobs in the health department in exchange for bribes.
The Criminal Chamber in charge of money crimes at the Rabat-based court of first instance sentenced the official from Ministry of Health to ten years in prison after the court found him guilty of corruption, reported Daily Assabah newspaper.
The judicial body found that the suspect used his power wrongfully for self-enrichment and political purposes.
The suspect allegedly was cooperating with a middleman. The middleman’s mission was to look for unemployed people willing to pay bribes for a promising government job, claiming that he knows an official from Ministry of Health who can use his power to hire them.
The middleman was mainly targeting unemployed people who protest in front of the Moroccan parliament in Rabat. The bribes were estimated at MAD 2,500,000 (USD 254,000).
The middleman was sentenced to ten months in prison.
Victims confessed during the trial that the middleman promised them jobs at the Ministry of Health’s regional Health centers. However, they said that after they spent a year at their posts, they did not receive a penny of their salary. Only then did they find out that the Ministry of Finance never received their files.
Some of the victims who were tricked allegedly got loans from the bank in order to pay the bribe to the middleman and his partner, drawn to the idea that they could pay the loan with their salaries.
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