A director of a patient transport firm has been given a 16-month suspended prison sentence for bribing a procurement manager to help secure NHS contracts worth £223,000, HSJ reports.
Tudor Dumitru, former director of SSC Secure Transport Limited, made payments of £73,715 between September 2021 and May 2022 to a transport manager at University College London Hospitals Foundation Trust in return for the award of contracts.
Mr Dumitru, 35, pleaded guilty in August to a single charge of bribery and was sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court on Monday (20 October). This followed an investigation by the NHS Counter Fraud Authority.
He was one of two men charged. The other was the recipient of the fraudulent payments, Pratik Patel, a transport manager at UCLH, who was also charged with bribery offences.
Mr Patel was found dead by police earlier this year, the day after he had been due to appear at a magistrates’ court hearing. The court heard he had died by suicide.
Date: 27 October