Kuwait: Absentee civil servants return salaries

Cairo: Some 100 civil servants at a Kuwaiti government agency have handed back their salaries to the state coffers after they were charged with faking signatures on reporting to work, a Kuwaiti newspaper has reported.

The employees, whose workplace was not disclosed, have been referred to a criminal court on charges of forging the work signatures, Al Qabas added, citing an unidentified “well-informed” source.

One person used to sign on behalf of the rest, the report said.

“Prosecution had previously interrogated the accused and after the decision to keep them in remand, they decided to return their salaries and admitted they had not worked during that period,” the source said.

“They hoped their court penalties would be commuted.”

The defendants are currently on trial at the criminal court on charges of receiving salaries without doing their job, the source added.

“Their defence lawyers will demand their penalties commuted after they were released by public prosecution,” the source said.

It was not immediately clear how long the defendants had been paid without doing work.

In recent years, Kuwait has stepped up a crackdown on suspected white-collar corruption.