A Kuwaiti court has sentenced a government employee to seven years in prison and ordered him to pay KD1.1 million (around $3.5 million) in a bribery case amid a relentless anti-corruption crackdown in the country.
The defendant, the head of a department at a ministry, was charged with illegally awarding KD296,000 worth contracts to a company and obtaining half of the amount in bribes, the Kuwaiti news portal Mediacourt reported.
The criminal Court also ordered the defendant be dismissed from his job. In the same case, the court handed down a similar jail sentence to an expatriate accomplice and ordered his deportation from the country after serving the term. It was not clear when the case surfaced.
In recent years, Kuwait has stepped up anti-corruption efforts, bringing several suspects to court.
Last month, a Kuwaiti court sentenced two expatriates to varying jail terms including a lifer, on charges of money laundering.
The Criminal Court handed down a life sentence to the prime defendant, a head of the accounting unit at a company in which the state has a 25% stake.
The court also ordered the defendant, an Egyptian national, be dismissed from his job, and pay KD2 million in a fine, amounting to a double of the money he is accused of laundering after seizing it from the company.
The second defendant, an American national, was given seven years in prison on charges of collusion with the prime accused in exchange for obtaining 5% of the stolen money.
In another case, the Criminal Court sentenced in March a Kuwaiti doctor in absentia to five years in prison and fined him KD1 million on charges of fraud after he had been found to have unlawfully received his monthly salary while living abroad for 15 years.
