- MAKKAH: The Sawa mobile chips scam case took a new turn on Monday when an appeals court overturned judge Sheikh Abid Al-Azouri’s decisions in the case, “because he would not reconsider his rulings that the court of appeals rejected three times before,” according to a source close to the court.
The sources said the court assigned the case to a new judge who will look at it from the very beginning.
According to the sources, the court refuted the rulings of the judge three times because, “he did not respond to the observations and comments it had made on his verdicts, the three times these verdicts were raised to it for final approval.”
“The main reason the court has turned down Sheikh Al-Azouri’s ruling was that he did not heed its directives to look first at the private rights before the public ones,” the sources said.
In Saudi jurisprudence, private rights refer to the personal infringements of the crime that must be rectified through compensation while public right refers to the government’s right to punish said crime. If an appeals court declines to approve a ruling three times the ruling becomes void.
The Jeddah summary court had sentenced the main suspect, Abdul Aziz Al-Johani, to 20 years in prison and 1,000 lashes under the public’s right.
The court also banned him from traveling abroad and asked him to reimburse an amount of SR240 million.
Al-Johani, who is now being detained at Briman Prison in Jeddah, had collected more than SR1.2 billion from more than 40,000 investors with the help of more than 50 group heads.
Al-Johani was a security guard in one of the communications companies in the Kingdom before he suddenly became a businessman dealing in millions of riyals.
