MANAMA, 15 March 2004 — Bahrain’s Cabinet has decided to pay $43 million in compensation to two pension funds after a parliamentary inquiry found evidence of mismanagement and fraud, a spokesman said.
Some 8.6 million dinars ($23 million) will go to a retirement fund for civil servants and 7.6 million dinars ($20 million) to a social security fund for private sector employees, Cabinet spokesman Mohammad Ibrahim Mutawa said after ministers met Sunday night.
Three ministers are due to be questioned before a house committee by the end of the month about the alleged irregularities and their alleged role in waiving loans to finance a number of projects.
The government had already ordered a company building the Bahrain Exhibition Center to immediately repay a loan it received from the funds and told the National Hotel Company to repay the interest on another loan from the funds.
MPs in January demanded the right to question Labor and Social Affairs Minister Majid Al-Alawi, who chairs the board of the social security fund, as well as his predecessor Abdul Nabi Al-Shoala, who is today a minister without portfolio, and Finance Minister Abdullah Sef, who runs the civil servants’ fund.
The questioning will mark the first time Bahrain’s 40-member Parliament has grilled ministers since it was restored in late 2002 as part of reforms that turned the Gulf state into a constitutional monarchy.
