A boarding school accountant in the Polotsk district has been sentenced to 5 years in prison for embezzlement

November 5, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. A boarding school accountant has been convicted of embezzlement in the Polotsk district, the official representative of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus for the Vitebsk region, Inna Gorbacheva, told a BELTA correspondent. A native of Novopolotsk, born in 1989, while working as an accountant at one of the boarding schools in the Polotsk district, embezzled funds from the educational institution for more than three years. Being an official and financially responsible person with relevant official powers, the woman repeatedly made deliberately false entries in accounting documents regarding the increase in the total amount payable for sick leave certificates, vacation pay, and other accruals. She then submitted this statement for approval by the institution's administration, after which she received the amount specified in the documents from the institution's account by check, credited the amount to the cash desk, and disposed of the excess at her own discretion. As a result of her actions, the educational institution suffered damages amounting to more than Br55 million. "During the investigation, irrefutable evidence of the accused's guilt was obtained. Numerous accounting documents, a work computer with a program confirming the method of embezzlement and the criminal activity of the accused were seized and studied," noted Inna Gorbacheva, adding that during the investigative actions, the woman fully admitted her guilt, repented of her actions, and returned the entire embezzled amount. The court of the Polotsk district and the city of Polotsk found the former accountant guilty of misappropriating property committed by an official using her official powers, committed on a particularly large scale, and based on Part 4 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus, sentenced her to five years of imprisonment with confiscation of property and deprivation of the right to hold positions related to accounting, storage, and disposal of material assets for two years. At the same time, taking into account a number of mitigating circumstances, she was granted a deferral of sentence for three years. -0-