Rogue surgeon who harmed patients in botched operations pockets pension payments worth around £1 million since fleeing the country

A rogue surgeon who harmed patients in a series of botched surgeries has pocketed nearly £1 million in pension money since fleeing the country.

Professor Sam Eljamel, head of neurosurgery at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital, has banked a staggering amount of money from a combination of NHS pensions over the last 11 years.

The disgraced doctor was suspended in December 2013, resigned from NHS Tayside the following year and then had his name removed from medical records in 2015.

Campaigners fear it has harmed more than 200 patients in Scotland. He is now back in his native Libya, where he continues to perform surgery on patients in hospitals, promoting his work on social media.

Eljamel retired from his job in Dundee in June 2014, which earned him more than £100,000 a year, leaving him with a pension of at least half that.

It was also reported that he received a pension during his time working for the NHS in England. His lucrative index-linked retirement pot will continue to grow even after he flees to North Africa.

Former Radio Tay presenter Pat Kelly, who was injured by Eljamel during surgery to supposedly correct spinal problems in 2007, told The Sunday Post: ‘It is an absolute disgrace that he is paid a fortune every month by our own government.

Professor Eljamel raised nearly £1 million in pension payments in 11 years

‘I haven’t been able to work since Eljamel murdered me and I’ve had to withdraw money from my pension to keep going.

‘I know many people who have had to do the same thing.’

Dougie Pymm, whose wife Annemarie was left paralyzed and unable to speak properly after the Eljamel surgery, also told the newspaper that he was ‘beyond anger’ because he knew the doctor had been receiving a pension for the last 11 years.

He said: ‘Any claims that the Government does not know where he is when we have been paying him a pension for so long are completely bogus.

Eljamel must be laughing at us all.’

The public inquiry is investigating the disgraced surgeon’s tenure at NHS Tayside from 1994 to 2014, but he was told earlier this year he had rejected the case. Eljamel Inquiry senior barrister Jamie Dawson, KC, warned it was “inevitable” that the inquiry would include “significant criticism” of him, but all efforts to contact him were unsuccessful.

As the scandal began to emerge, NHS Tayside accepted Eljamel’s request for retirement and the General Medical Council allowed Eljamel to voluntarily re-register.

This meant he was allowed to walk away without a black mark on his record so he could work elsewhere.

Meanwhile, his former patients say they are still prevented from seeking justice because of the three-year statute of limitations on compensation claims.

NHS Tayside said yesterday: ‘NHS Tayside does not offer a pension scheme. Pensions are administered by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency for NHS workers on behalf of the Scottish Government.’

The pension institution was contacted for comment.

Eljamel is also the subject of a Police Scotland investigation into his conduct called Operation Crackdown, which began in 2018.