Cairo: A Kuwaiti criminal court has sentenced a Bangladeshi lawmaker to four years in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of KD1.9 million on charges of human trafficking and bribery in a high-profile case, local media reported.
The lawmaker, named in the media as Mohammed Shahid Islam, was charged with receiving money from dozens of workers in return for bringing them in from Bangladesh to Kuwait through a company he managed with illegal assistance from Kuwaiti officials charged in the case.
He has reportedly amassed KD5 million worth of assets in the Gulf country.
The court also sentenced Undersecretary of the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry Maj. Gen. Mazen Al Jarrah; Hassan Al Khedr, a manpower director; and ex-parliamentarian Nawaf Al Muteiri to four years in prison each in the same case. Both officials were charged with receiving bribes in return for illegally facilitating the Bangladeshi lawmaker’s transactions.
The court ordered Al Jarrah and Al Muteiri to pay a fine of KD1.9 million each while it fined Al Khedr KD180,000. The court ordered Al Jarrah and Al Khedr be dismissed from their government jobs.
A fugitive Syrian man and a Bangladeshi defendant were also handed down three years in jail each and ordered their deportation from Kuwait after serving the sentencing.
Meanwhile, sitting MP Saadoun Hamad and ex-lawmaker Salah Khurshed were acquitted of charges of influence peddling and receiving bribery from the Bangladeshi defendant.
All the rulings can be appealed.
During the court hearings, the defendants had denied charges of human trafficking, bribery and power abuse.
Al Qabas newspaper quoted an unnamed source close to investigations as saying that the defendants are still connected to a separate case of money laundering that prosecutors are still investigating.
