A court in northern Russia has found a local official guilty of embezzlement after he made up a fake employee to collect her salary and then received a bonus he awarded her for International Women's Day.
The court in the Russian republic of Sakha ordered Stanislav Klimov, a former waterways and shipping official, to pay 250,000 rubles ($4,200) in fines after awarding 44,954 rubles in salary and bonus payments to the fictional employee, the Eastern Siberian Transport Prosecutor's office said Monday in a statement.
Klimov collected the payments between December 2011 and March 2012 and also received a bonus to mark International Women's Day, celebrated on March 8, that he himself had awarded to the fake employee, according to the statement.
The woman whose name appeared on the payroll of the Aldan region's shipping department, which was headed by Klimov, said she had never applied for the job and had never performed the job, the statement said.
