Expat brothers land in jail over bribery in Kuwait
Defendant admits to having taken bribe from his brother for transaction at govt agency
Cairo: Kuwait’s top appeals court has sentenced two expatriate brothers to four years in prison on charges of bribery.
At court hearings, one of the two defendants had admitted to having taken a bribe from his brother to finalise a transaction for him at an unspecified government agency.
The defendant told the court he had received KD1,000 from his brother allegedly to hand it over to a mediator, but he had pocketed the sum instead.
Their case was part of a bigger cash-for-mediation case. The nationality of both defendants was not given.
In recent years, Kuwait has stepped up crackdown on corruption and fraud.
A Kuwaiti court recently sentenced a fugitive expatriate to seven years in prison after trying him in absentia on charges of raking in nearly KD25 million from fake property deals.
The defendant, who is an Egyptian national, is the focus of more than 100 fraud cases filed against him after he had collected nearly KD25 million from selling phantom property in collabora-tion with a Kuwaiti businessman, Al Qabas reported last month, citing an unidentified “well-informed” source.
The International police, Interpol, have been alerted to search for the wanted defendant and arrest him, the source added.
The defendant followed a plan by which he had cashed profits for a few months to the unsuspecting customers in order to make a name for himself and lure a larger number of investors whom he later defrauded before fleeing with the money to outside the country, the source explained.
The Kuwaiti co-defendant, now in prison, denied knowledge that the purchased property was fake.