The Israel Police arrested some 40 doctors, interns, and pharmacists early Sunday who are suspected of having faked degrees to obtain licenses under false pretenses.
According to the police, the suspects submitted diplomas presenting them as having completed medical or pharmacology studies at a university in Armenia, when in fact they studied there briefly without completing their degrees. The suspects allegedly used their fake diplomas to earn licenses to work as doctors and pharmacists in Israel.
"The investigation began when the Health Ministry reached out to the Israel Police and asked them to investigate an anonymous complaint it had received on the matter," the police said Sunday in a statement.
The investigation revealed that the suspects had studied medicine at various colleges and universities abroad but not met the criteria for degrees from those institutions. They allegedly contacted a fixer – also a failed medical student who eventually received documents certifying him as a medical school graduate – who sent them to a number of academic institutions in Armenia. The suspects, with the fixer's help, traveled to Armenia and spent a short time studying there, after which they received diplomas without completing the course.
The police say that the suspects were aware that they were presenting falsified credentials to the Health Ministry when they applied for licenses to practice in Israel. Some still managed to pass the Israeli medical board examination and find jobs as doctors or interns in hospitals.
The Northern District of the Central Investigative Unit was charged with overseeing the process and carried out a long-term undercover investigation, which culminated with police conducting 40 raids nationwide early Sunday.
One suspect, a man in his 30s from the village of Arara, was arrested while on duty as a doctor in the Internal Medicine department at a prominent hospital in Israel. During another arrest, the father of a suspect who was passing as a general practitioner was caught leaving the premises of the arrest carrying two homemade automatic "Carlo" rifles. A third suspect, a dentist who runs a private practice, has served prison time for terrorist activity.
During the investigation, police discovered pamphlets written in Arabic that urged students who were "having difficulty completing their studies" to transfer to universities in Armenia or the Republic of Georgia "without losing time," and included contact details.
Most of the suspects were due to be remanded in the Nazareth Magistrate's Court on Sunday.
Chairman of the Israeli Medical Association – World Fellowship Dr. Zeev Feldman said in response to the arrests that "there is no substitute for holding those who practice medicine in Israel to a high standard. The Health Ministry must ensure that the [licensing] process is careful and that only graduates of foreign medical schools that meet the necessary criteria are allowed to take the medical boards.
"We need to move toward graduates of medical school in Israel and abroad taking the exact same exams. The interns' professional ability must be evaluated carefully during their internship. Only utilizing all these measures will ensure the level of medical practitioners in Israel," Feldman said.
The Health Ministry released a statement Sunday that said, "In response to suspicions that arose in the ministry that medical training in Armenia was not up to par, the ministry has published warnings about the quality of medical studies in that country and shared the information with the Israel Police."
Some 43% of doctors in Israel are study and train abroad. The latest report by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira probed the training Israeli doctors receive outside Israel and noted that the high number of Israelis who study abroad is an indication that the nation and the Health Ministry have "given up" on shaping the training of future generations of Israeli doctors.
