JEDDAH, 25 May — The Court of Grievances in Jeddah has fined and jailed 24 government employees after convicting them of forgery, abuse of their authority and embezzlement.

A high-level source told Arab News that the convicted employees will be jailed for between one and three years, and be made to pay fines of up to SR30,000.

The employees have admitted their wrongdoing, and the Court of Cassation has upheld the judgment against them.

“The Court of Grievances issued its judgment on the basis of strong evidence. It gave the employees the opportunity to disprove the allegations against them, without putting pressure on them,” a source told Arab News.

The convicted officials will not be given the chance to challenge the decision, as the court had already given them 30 days in which they could have disproved the allegations.

The source added that the Court of Grievances has informed the departments where the convicted employees were working about its decision.

A lawsuit was presented to the court after the employees were closely observed over a long period.

This followed complaints from their fellow employees, as well as private citizens, who said the convicted men were receiving money from dubious individuals and were exploiting their position to further their own interests.

The court made the decision after considering the evidence for seven months.

The Court of Grievances in the Eastern Province has also sentenced eight government employees to jail and fined them after they were convicted of involvement in forgery and embezzlement.

In another development, the medical committee in the Makkah region fined three expatriate doctors in Meesan General Hospital a total of SR25,000, half the blood money required for causing the death of a woman through negligence.

A high-level source at the department of health affairs in Taif told Arab News that the intern and another specialist at the hospital were told to pay SR10,000 each, while a general practitioner was ordered to pay SR5,000.

Relatives of the woman said she had been suffering from lung thrombosis but the doctors had failed to diagnose the illness.