The manager of a Leicester practice has been restored to the Register six years after he was convicted of fraud.
Dispensing optician Zahir Ibrahim, manager of The Eye Care Centre, was convicted in 1999 of 12 counts of false accounting. He was sentenced to 180 hours community service and ordered to pay compensation of £2,578.10 and £256 legal costs.
He was subsequently struck off at a hearing of the GOC's disciplinary committee (News, March 17 2000).
However, last week another disciplinary committee decided to restore him.
Chairman David Pyle told Ibrahim: 'We acknowledge the penalty you have paid including a lengthy community service order and recognise the efforts you have made to put systems in place and to assure everyone of your good intentions for the future. We are therefore persuaded to grant your application to be restored to the Register.'
Bradley Albuery, for the Council, told the hearing that in 1997/98 Leicestershire Health Authority detected an unusually high proportion of repair and replacement vouchers and child frame supplement claims. The HA 'became concerned at the irregular claim pattern in respect of claims submitted for work undertaken'.
An investigation followed and revealed more irregularities. Ibrahim was prosecuted and paid compensation to the HA.
Albuery said there had been 12 'specimen charges', including six types of fraud which involved vouchers for children who did not wear spectacles and claims for tinted spectacles when they were not supplied.
Ibrahim applied on March 15 2000 to be restored to the register on August 9 2001 but that application was rejected on the basis that a claim against him in respect of his activities - later quantified at £26,693.11 - was still outstanding.
Albuery told the committee at the hearing that this claim had now been finalised.