DAMMAM, 4 January 2003 — The Court of Grievances here has sentenced a Saudi national to five years imprisonment and SR30,000 fine on charges of forgery and circulation of fake SR500 notes in the Eastern Province recently.
The court in its verdict said the accused counterfeited currency notes using the kind of paper used for the original notes with the help of a scanner. The court refused to accept the defendant’s plea that the police forced a confession out of him to be used against him in court.
The forged notes were first noticed when the accused bought gold worth SR17, 000 from a jeweler in Dammam. But when the jeweler expressed doubts about the validity of the SR500 notes he paid, the accused fled the scene taking the gold with him.
The jeweler immediately called the police who caught him after a hot chase.
Police investigations proved that the man was in the habit of circulating fake notes. They also said the accused confessed that he used a scanner for the forgery, though he later he denied the confession.
The investigation report said the forgery was carried out in such professional manner that one could not easily detect the deception.
In his statement to the Review and Investigation Board, the accused said he was not guilty of the charges brought against him and that a confession was forced out of him.
However, the matter was referred to the Court of Grievances for final judgment. The court said that since the accused did not produce any evidence to prove that he was forced to make the confession, his statement to police was taken as a valid proof.
The charges mentioned in the police report were further confirmed by the fact that the gold that he bought using the forged money was found with him at the time of his arrest, the court pointed out. Another evidence against him was that he had given a false name to the jeweler to be written in his purchase bill.
