An Italian hospital employee has been accused of skipping work for 15 years while still being paid.

According to BBC News, the 67-year-old man in question (who has not been identified) has been nicknamed "The King of Absentees" by local news media.

The Public Prosecutor's Office of Catanzaro alleges that he stopped showing up to work his shifts at the Ciaccio hospital in the southern city of Catanzaro back in 2005. However, he continued to show collect his full-time salary for more than a decade and a half.

He eventually accrued the princely sum of €538,000 (over $600,000) in wages before he was caught. He now stands accused of multiple counts of fraud, extortion, and abuse of office.

[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1385005207503921155]]

In addition to this, BBC News reports that he also threatened a female manager to keep his payments coming regularly when she planned on filing a disciplinary report against him.

This manager retired from the hospital, and the employee's ongoing absence was not noticed by her successor or by other members of the human resources department.

[[imagecaption|| Credit: Pexels]]

The Guardian reports that another six managers are also being investigated on suspicion of having played a role in enabling his alleged absenteeism.

Italian police forces launched a probe into the hospital's internal affairs in a large-scale white-collar criminal investigation codenamed "Part Time."

Police investigators gathered evidence from attendance and salary records as well as witness statements from colleagues which implicated the employee in question in a number of felonies.

Italy introduced a number of stern new judicial measures back in 2016 to combat fraud and embezzlement in the country's public sector, The Guardian adds.

According to the publication, a high-profile government inquiry found that absenteeism and other forms of bureaucratic corruption were absolutely rife among members of the civil service.

A number of government employees across a range of administrative roles were reportedly found by the inquiry to have been clocking on for a shift and then leaving immediately after.

Some allegedly skipped work to going canoeing, shopping, or to socialize with their friends, while others took advantage of loose lax laws to clock on and subsequently go back to bed.

Featured Image Credit: Pexels

Hospital employee accused of skipping work for 15 years