Manama: A court in Kuwait has sentenced a Syrian to 15 years in jail for getting Kuwaiti citizenship fraudulently and benefiting from its advantages.
The Criminal Court also imposed a fine equal to the salaries the defendant had received as a serviceman with the border guards and ordered his deportation following the jail term, Kuwaiti daily Al Rai reported on Wednesday.
A Kuwaiti national who helped him in getting the citizenship by forging documents was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail for “selling the Kuwaiti nationality to a Syrian expatriate”.
According to the case files, the Kuwaiti man forged documents to claim that the Syrian was his own son. Presenting the documents, he was able to obtain a birth certificate and subsequently Kuwaiti citizenship certificate, national identity card and passport for the Syrian.
The Kuwaiti national in 2004 abused the services of the Citizenship and Passport Department to give false information and forged documents about the Syrian man, the public prosecution concluded in its investigations.
The Syrian man was able to use the Kuwaiti documents to secure a job and earn salaries.
Kuwaiti authorities have launched a massive operation to unearth cases of forgery and furnishing false information that enabled several foreigners, with the complicity of Kuwaitis, to acquire Kuwaiti citizenship.
Kuwaiti authorities have been facing formidable challenges in dealing with the highly sensitive and intricately complex naturalisation issue.
Massive scam
Earlier this month, Kuwait revoked the citizenship of 20 naturalised Kuwaitis after investigations concluded they had cheated on their citizenship applications.
Under the Kuwaiti citizenship law, the nationality is revoked if the applicant provided false information or fake certificates during the application process.
The revocation is ordered by the cabinet based on a request from the interior minister.
The 19 men and a woman in question were related and the investigations focused on their dates of birth which proved cheating on the applications. The case was referred to the interior ministry.
The number of people arrested in the first seven months of 2016 for obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship fraudulently was 106.
In June, a police officer of Syrian origin was stripped of Kuwaiti citizenship after the authorities discovered that his application documents were forged.
The officer reportedly admitted he was well aware of the scam.
Two Syrian brothers were also arrested in June and admitted that they acquired Kuwaiti citizenship in 1970 through separate agreements with a Kuwaiti man who forged documents to add them as members of his family.
In April, three Saudi brothers were arrested after they fraudulently obtained Kuwaiti citizenship.
How it works
The investigation launched by the interior ministry revealed that the father, born in 1950, wanted his three sons to have the Kuwaiti nationality.
In 1998, he contacted three Kuwaiti men and offered each of them money to add his sons to their citizenship records.
The Kuwaitis agreed and each of them mentioned the Saudi man’s one son each as his own in their filings with the Kuwaiti authorities, allowing them to get citizenship.
Each of the sons was provided with a laissez-passer from the Kuwaiti embassy in the Saudi capital Riyadh. The document was used to obtain Kuwaiti passports and identity cards, identifying them as Kuwaiti citizens born to Kuwaiti fathers.
Two of the brothers joined the Kuwaiti army and the third became a policeman with the interior ministry.
Following the investigation, arrest warrants were issued by the public prosecution and the security authorities arrested the three brothers and referred them to the General Directorate for Citizenship and Travel Documents.
Confronted with the facts, the brothers admitted that they had obtained Kuwaiti citizenship fraudulently through three Kuwaiti men.
One of the Kuwaitis was arrested and he confessed that he had taken KD10,000 [Dh121,950] from a Saudi man in order to register his son as his own and enable him to obtain Kuwaiti citizenship.
The second Kuwaiti had reportedly left the country a long time ago, prompting the authorities to take action to arrest him upon his return to the country, while the third died in 2010 in Britain where he was being treated for Leukaemia.
In December last year, the Kuwaiti authorities arrested four Kuwaitis, including three of Syrian origin, who conspired and used false documents to grant Kuwaiti citizenship to six Syrians.
Efforts by the Kuwaiti authorities in 2015 led to the unmasking of 105 people who got Kuwaiti citizenship illegally.