The Board of Grievances’ (Administrative Court’s) Criminal Court postponed issuing a verdict yesterday against a suspended Jeddah mayor’s assistant who is accused by a major Jeddah company’s engineer of receiving a bribe.
The court is considering evidence in the corruption trial involving eight defendants accused of accepting bribes stemming from business transactions with the Jeddah municipality.
The postponement comes after the engineer at court retracted his signed statement. The assistant was absolved of similar charges last week.
The withdrawn statement alleged the assistant received a land worth SR 1.4 million, which was paid to avoid the assistant “obstructing” eight company transactions, according to the engineer. The land was bought from a woman and the ownership was transferred to the assistant, said the engineer during interrogations.
In court, the engineer said the land was bought from the woman and then sold in installments to the assistant. He was introduced to the assistant at a friend’s house. The engineer said he knew the assistant was looking for a land to buy in installments. The assistant provided the court with documents proving he paid SR 400,000 and then SR 250,000 as installments. But he and the engineer were arrested before completing the amount.
Meanwhile, on Monday details of a phone conversation implicating a senior official were shared with the court.
The senior official said before the Jeddah flood disasters in 2009 and 2011 took place he overheard a high-ranking official speaking on the phone about raising the value of the rainwater-drainage project from SR 240 million to SR 300 million. He named the high-ranking official he claimed was on the receiving end of the call.
The senior official said he heard the former Jeddah mayor received SR 2 million for each establishment built in locations along the coastline and he granted lands allocated for parks in northern Jeddah to an unknown individual.
The senior official, who has since been suspended, is on trial along with seven other defendants.
He defended the gift of a car he received from another defendant saying it was not a bribe but a stipulation of the contract between the mayor’s office and the contractor. He asserts he is innocent of the charges against him.
The high-ranking official, who was named in court as presenting a GMC Yukon to the senior official, denied having anything to do with the transaction. The official said he has a large number of employees in his contracting company and that an American employee was in charge of the company’s car section at that time. He also denied having the phone call in which he allegedly raised the contract value and said the project value is outlined in documents at the mayor’s office and can be verified with them.
Two of the seven defendants in court denied charges of bribery.
Two others, a contracting company owner and one of his employees, were questioned about money given by them to officials of the mayor’s office. The owner claimed his employee is responsible for distributing Zakat, which the employee admitted.
The employee said the Zakat amounted to SR 13,000 and he personally distributed envelopes containing SR 200 to deserving employees including some at the mayor’s office. He said on the day he visited the mayor’s office, he gave the envelopes meant for deserving employees to a senior official to distribute as the staff was absent.
The head of the judiciary panel wondered why the employee would not look for deserving employees among other departments rather than one that his company had contracts.
The seventh defendant, an Arab investor, is accused of paying a bribe to one of the defendants and a suspended official in exchange for permits issued to his company. He denied the charges. The next court session will take place on Sept. 30.
Bribery charges surface at Jeddah flood trial
