• Former Auckland pharmacist Murad Al Gailani lost a bid for discharge without conviction.
• Al Gailani embezzled nearly $50,000 from a Silverdale Unichem before working at a pharmacy in Australia.
• Judge Anna Fitzgibbon ordered Al Gailani to return to New Zealand in February to decide his sentence.

A former North Shore Auckland pharmacist who embezzled almost $50,000 from his employer before taking up a job at a small town pharmacy in Australia has lost a bid for a discharge without conviction.

Murad Al Gailani, 30, flew back to New Zealand for a recent court hearing, during which his lawyer argued that the consequences of a conviction would be out of all proportion to the crime because it would make it more difficult for Al Gailani to continue employment in Victoria.

Lawyer Ben Mugisho said the pharmaceutical board in Australia was aware of the situation and was awaiting the outcome of the case to determine if Al Gailani should keep his certification there.

“I do acknowledge the amount involved here is not insignificant,” Mugisho said of his client. “I acknowledge the breach of trust as well.

“He recognises the very stupid mistake he did.”

But there are a number of mitigating circumstances, he argued.

Al Gailani had been working for a Unichem branch in Silverdale for seven years when he began siphoning money into his personal account in August 2022.

Court documents state he “recklessly” filled out a form to receive Government funds, giving his personal bank account instead of the pharmacy’s.

He then received payments totalling $49,343 over the next 12 months, with deposits ranging from $15 to over $8000 at a time.

Pharmacist Murad Al Gailani has pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $50,000 from an Auckland Unichem. He asked for a discharge without conviction, arguing that a criminal record would hinder his career prospects in Australia. Photo / Supplied

“When the pharmacy eventually uncovered the fraud, the defendant admitted to having received the money and subsequently repaid it,” court documents state. “He said that the form asked for both personal pharmacist details and details of the pharmacy.

“He said that after he noticed the funds being transferred into his account, he assumed that these were for a Covid health practitioner’s payment.”

Al Gailani then went to work in Australia in March 2023.

His lawyer said during the hearing late last month that his Australian employer had known of Al Gailani’s predicament and at first supported him.

But the business has since come under new ownership and the defendant was informed a week before the hearing that he was no longer wanted for employment “after a review of recent developments in New Zealand”.

Al Gailani has clearly shown remorse, paying back the company even before he was charged with a crime, his lawyer said. He was co-operative with both the employer investigation and the police investigation that followed. And he was deemed to have prior good character.

Since the theft, he’s taken a course on ethical pharmacy practices to make sure “this type of behaviour does not repeat itself in the future”, Mugisho said, noting that Al Gailani has good standing in his current community, where he volunteers for the local fire brigade.

All of those factors reduce the overall gravity of his offending to low, Mugisho argued. The consequences, meanwhile, could have a major effect on his life overseas.

Al Gailani intended to challenge his most recent job loss if granted a discharge without conviction, his lawyer said.

Pharmacist Murad Al Gailani has pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $50,000 from an Auckland Unichem. He asked for a discharge without conviction, arguing that a criminal record would hinder his career prospects in Australia. Photo / Supplied

A conviction on his record could also make it more difficult to travel to pharmacist industry conferences in the future, he said.

“What he’s asking for is just really a chance from this court to see if he can pursue his career [in Australia] without all this hindrance,” he said.

Police opposed the discharge without conviction application, noting the seriousness of the offending and that it “wasn’t a one-off mistake” - having been the result of 16 separate transactions over the course of a year.

While there will be serious consequences for him, they aren’t out of proportion to the crime, the prosecutor argued.

Judge Anna Fitzgibbon agreed.

“It wasn’t that sophisticated, but you had 16 opportunities to correct your actions,” she said. “You did nothing to rectify the situation.”

There may be some difficulty in finding another job in his field, but that would be an ordinary consequence of conviction and part of a sentence’s deterrence function, she said.

The judge ordered him to return to court in February to decide his sentence.

She noted that his Australian visa is subject to cancellation if he receives a sentence of over one year’s imprisonment. But prison is unlikely in this case, she added.

Al Gailani has pleaded guilty to a representative charge of obtaining by deception, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.