‘Ghost Employee’ Told To Return 19 Years’ Wages

An auxiliary nurse and legislative specialist sacked for repeatedly failing to turn up to his two full-time jobs miles apart has been ordered to return 19 years of wages.

Marco Antonio Lopes poses in undated photo. The court ordered the employ of the Ministry of Health in Santo Antonio de Padua, Brazil, and the Legislative Assembly, in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, to return 19 years of wages as the distance between the two cities is more than 250 kilometers. (Newsflash)

A judge in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ordered the ‘ghost employee’ of the Ministry of Health and the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro State (ALERJ) to pay a fine equivalent to the wages he unduly received.

The judge also suspended his political rights and banned him from working as a government contractor or receiving tax or credit incentives or benefits for 10 years.

Crooked Marco Antonio Lopes joined the Ministry of Health in 1984.

In 1989, he began working as an auxiliary nurse in the municipality of Santo Antonio de Padua, Rio de Janeiro State.

That year, he also started working as a legislative specialist at ALERJ in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

He was expected to work 40 hours a week in both positions, despite more than 155 miles separating his two workplaces.

Remarkably, despite repeated absences in both jobs, he was paid his full wages for both positions until 2016.

Picture shows workers in the Legislative Assembly, in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, undated. The court ordered Marco Antonio Lopes , an employ of the Ministry of Health in Santo Antonio de Padua, Brazil, and the Legislative Assembly, in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, to return 19 years of wages as the distance between the two cities is more than 250 kilometers. (@alerj/Newsflash)

That year, after learning that the Ministry of Health had opened a case against him, he was forced to resign from his job there.

And two years later, in 2018, ALERJ finally sacked him due to his repeated, unexplained absences.

Judge Vigdor Teitel said in the verdict on 13th March: “It is alleged that the civil inquiry found the defendant’s schedule to be incompatible and physically impossible to attend both positions, as the federal position (as an auxiliary nurse at the Ministry of Health), with a weekly workload of 40 hours, should be performed at the health department of the Municipality of Santo Antonio de Padua, and the legislative specialist position at ALERJ, with the same workload, should be carried out in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro during the operating hours of the said Legislative Assembly, daily, from 9am to 6pm, totalling a workload of 80 hours per week and, furthermore, since 21st March 1997, due to a distance of over 250 kilometres between the two municipalities.”

The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, which investigated Lopes’s repeated absences in both jobs, described his actions as “an evident act of bad faith, causing illicit enrichment and damage to the treasury”.

The investigation found that Lopes had pocketed BRL 1,654,855.50 (GBP 259,000) from the Ministry of Health and BRL 3,329,290.98 (GBP 521,000) from ALERJ between January 1989 and May 2016.

It is not clear why the judgement only covered the period from 1997 to 2016 and not the whole period, from 1989.