Cairo: A Kuwaiti doctor at a government-run hospital, who got his salaries monthly for 15 years despite skipping work, has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Kuwait’s Criminal Court has also ordered the physician to pay back the unlawful salaries and fined him their double with the total amounting to KD1 million ($3.2 million ), Al Qabas newspaper reported.
The doctor was tried in absentia.
The court said the case documents had shown that the defendant had stayed away from his work for 15 years at the hospital run by the Ministry of Health and still got paid monthly.
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Neither the age nor the name of the doctor was given.
In his inaugural address in December, Kuwait’s Emir Mishal Al Ahmad vowed to combat corruption.
In recent years, Kuwait has uncovered several graft cases. Earlier this month, a communication official was sent to jail pending trial on charges of embezzling KD6 million (around $19.5 million), according to media reports.
The official, whose name was not revealed, faces charges of money laundering, forging official documents, and embezzling KD6 million from the Ministry of Communications’ revenues collected from subscribers.
In a separate case, Kuwait’s top appeals court upheld a seven-year imprisonment sentence earlier given to a former government minister in connection with another corruption case.
Mubarak Alarou, who served as minister of social affairs from December 2021 to August 2022, was arrested last month upon arriving in the country. Alarou also served as a lawmaker in 2020.
The Court of Cassation confirmed similar sentencing against three other defendants in the same case, making all verdicts final.
In November, another court sentenced Alarou to seven years in prison on charges of profiteering through a business contract, harming public money, and influence peddling, the media reported at the time.
