Cyprus police investigate fake sick-leave certificates issued to eight Central Prison officers — one was absent for 205 working days in a year

Eight officers at Nicosia Central Prison and two doctors — a general practitioner and an orthopaedist — have become subjects of a criminal investigation in Cyprus. An audit found that sick-leave certificates were issued without corresponding records of consultations in the General Healthcare System (GESY).

The case concerns an alleged collusion between medical professionals and prison staff aimed at misappropriating public funds through fictitious certificates of incapacity for work. It was prompted by a special report on the prison department dated 10 March 2026 and testimony given to police investigators by a representative of the Audit Office.

According to the audit, some prison officers in recent years worked for only two or three weeks a year while continuing to receive their full salaries. One employee spent 205 working days on sick leave in 2023 and a further 202 working days in 2024, submitting 51 certificates for 2023 and 60 certificates for 2024. Only six of them were issued by doctors other than the two under investigation.

To determine whether the certificates were backed by actual consultations, auditors requested data from the Health Insurance Organisation (HIO) and cross-checked it against records in GESY. For four of the eight officers, the general practitioner is listed as their personal doctor, but many of the certificates he issued have no consultation record at all. He was not the personal doctor of the other four, although he regularly issued certificates for them. A similar pattern was found in the case of the orthopaedist.

The most telling case involved an officer who submitted 54 medical certificates, while the system recorded only six consultations, and just three of them matched the certificates in terms of dates and diagnoses. There were also records of consultations dated later than the certificates themselves.

The contents of the documents also raised questions: the general practitioner regularly listed orthopaedic diagnoses — osteoarthritis, sprains, knee injuries and neck pain — while the orthopaedist listed “migraine” as the diagnosis on one of the certificates. The Cyprus Medical Association noted that a doctor with a valid licence may, in certain circumstances, issue a certificate outside their speciality, and this is not in itself a violation.