Kuwait: Traffic worker get 10 years in jail for pocketing fines
Defendant was convicted of embezzling KD68,000 in state funds
Cairo: A Kuwaiti court had sentenced a traffic employee to 10 years in prison and ordered him to pay KD200,000 on charges of harming state money, a local newspaper has report.
The defendant, an employee at the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry’s traffic department had been tried in absentia and is still on the run outside the country, Al Qabas added. The court found the man guilty of embezzling KD68,000 from his workplace by having collected traffic fines and funneling the money into his bank account.
“This case and others expose a major defect that must be addressed,” Al Qabas quoted an unidentified source as saying.
“This flaw lies in allowing money to be collected manually and not electronically. This is in addition to weak monitoring of public money,” the source added.
In recent years, Kuwait has stepped up a crackdown on corruption and tainted white-collar suspects.