Saudi Arabia To Name And Shame Corrupt Officials

Saudi Arabia’s Shoura Council has stepped up efforts to fight corruption by urging the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Nazaha) to publicise photos and details of corrupt officials in the Kingdom, local daily Arab News reported.

The council has also asked to quicken corruption trials and has instructed Nazaha to provide an assessment of the graft situation in the country.

“The Shoura agreed that Nazaha must revise its regulations to include defamation as a form of punishment for individuals involved in graft,” Fahaad Al-Hamad, assistant president of the council was quoted as saying.

“The Shoura also urged the commission to coordinate with government departments to speed up investigation into graft cases and trial for people involved in such cases.”

The 150-member council also instructed Nazaha to publish its findings on the state of corruption in the Kingdom.

Gulf countries are increasingly stepping up efforts to stamp out corruption, which was also one of the main triggers of the Arab Spring protests in 2011.

As a part of a stringent crackdown on corrupt officials, an Omani court sentenced the former executive of an engineering firm to 15 years in jail for accepting bribes in exchange for contracts from a state owned oil company.

Mohammed Ali, an Indian national and the former managing director of Galfar Engineering, was also ordered to pay $4.61 million in fines for the convictions.

Earlier this year, the Sultanate also sentenced the CEO of state-owned Oman Oil Company to 23 years in jail for bribery, abuse of office and money laundering. The sentence was the most severe punishment meted out to those charged with corruption in the country.

Oman has also brought a number of officials to trial on corruption charges after its ruler issued a decree in 2011, which made the prosecutor financially and operationally independent.

A PwC survey found that corruption is prevalent in 35 per cent of companies in the Middle East. The rate is significantly higher than the global corruption level, which stands at 27 per cent.