Dubai: The founder and managing director of Galfar, one of Oman’s biggest construction companies, has resigned after being convicted by an Omani court in a high profile corruption case.
P. Mohammad Ali, an Indian national, who was convicted by the Muscat Court of First Instance in a graft case, resigned as the managing director of Galfar Engineering and Contracting SAOG, according to the company’s posting on Muscat Securities Market (MSM) on Wednesday.
Galfar is reportedly Oman’s single largest private sector employer, and P. Mohammad Ali is known as being the richest Indian in Oman.
The construction company’s board of directors met on Tuesday in an emergency meeting and issued a statement that the managing director, as well as another senior company employee who was also convicted, stepped down from their positions in the publicly listed company.
“In light of the court decision against two senior members of the management and for the best interest of the stakeholders, the managing director has voluntary resigned from the membership of the board of directors,” according to the company’s statement on the MSM website.
The statement added that the board of directors had decided to accept the resignation to ensure that the company’s operations and businesses are not affected.
The company has now appointed KPMG, an independent international firm, to establish the accountability of the recent court case on the bribery issue, as well as review the existing policies and procedures of the company.
The board of directors also decided to review policies and procedures for the company’s code of conduct including “whistle blowing”, says the post on the MSM website.
Earlier, on Tuesday the company had posted on the MSM website that the guilty verdict against Mohammad Ali and Abdul Majeed Naushad in the graft case was in their personal capacity.
Earlier in the week, the two Galfar officials and Juma Al Hinai, an official in the finance ministry who also serves as head of the tenders committee at state-owned Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), were found guilty by the court in the graft case.
The judge at the Court of First Instance in Muscat sentenced Al Hinai, from whose house the authorities had confiscated 873,000 Rials in cash, to three years in jail and ordered him to pay a fine of 600,000 Rials (Dh5.70 million). He was banned from holding public office for 20 years.
The court also sentenced Mohammad Ali, who reportedly holds about 20 per cent stakes in Galfar Engineering, to three years in jail and Naushad to two years in jail. The outgoing Galfar managing director, who had maintained his innocence throughout the trial that began in November, was also ordered to pay 600,000 Rials in fines.
Naushad, who had initially denied the charges but changed his plea during the hearings, was ordered to pay 200,000 Rials, the judge said. Ali and Naushad, who hold Indian citizenship, are to be deported after they serve their sentences.
More than 20 government officials and private executives from Oman’s oil industry and related sectors are on trial on charges of offering or accepting bribes in exchange for contracts, mostly in infrastructure projects.
Naushad was charged with complicity in providing the bribes.
