(Quebec) The pandemic has prompted a significant spike in denunciations to the Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit (UPAC): These are up 139% over the past year, amid numerous reports of falsified vaccination cards being faked across the healthcare network.
Posted 11:24am Updated 1:05pm
The police, which specializes in corruption, presented its annual report on Tuesday, which reported 795 false reports received, including around 300 in connection with the production of fake vaccination cards.
“The pandemic has had a direct impact on the number of denunciations and also on the volume of work over the past year. Since it was people in public offices who had prepared false vaccination certificates, the UPAC therefore got involved,” Anti-Corruption Commissioner Frédérick Gaudreau told the press conference in Quebec.
The organization says it has opened 41 investigations related to vaccination certificates. Already, 69 insults have been reported against those who obtained the fake vaccination records, while criminal charges have been filed against three health network workers who allegedly produced the fake documents. The production of forged documents by officials within the state apparatus, regardless of sector, is considered a serious crime by the authorities.
“These are people that the population trusts and it requires a high standard of integrity,” Mr Gaudreau commented on the arrested staff. This phenomenon also poses “an important public health problem,” he says.
In January, a former vaccination center employee admitted to La Presse that he had received a bribe of around $60,000 to put false vaccination records on the files of around sixty people.
“It was very easy money and their security was so bad it was like they were telling you do it! ” explained Adams Diwa, a former Olympic Stadium Vaccination Center worker who was arrested by UPAC.
Exponential increase in volume
The commissioner says his investigators face significant challenges, including the “exponential” growth in the volume of evidence. The proliferation of computer media means that a search often leads to the seizure of millions of pages of documents, while case law favors maximum exposure of evidence to the accused. Several large files maintained by various police organizations have failed in recent years due to the difficulty of managing this voluminous evidence.
Sorting out material that could be protected by attorney-client privilege is also tedious in corruption cases: UPAC estimates that as a result of this exercise it takes on average about 1000 days before it has access to the evidence on its files, which could be facilitated by a new legal framework.
“The federal legislature must be challenged to do this,” says the commissioner.