JEDDAH, 11 December 2002 — The Court of Grievances in Riyadh has sentenced two government officials to a year in jail and SR40,000 fine each on charges of financial irregularities and abuse of office, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.
One of the two accused working in the pay section of a ministry made unauthorized payment of SR320,096 to the second accused, an employee working in another section the same office. The first accused was the officer responsible for writing pay checks. When he prepared the checks of the second accused, he added several thousands of riyals to his actual salary. This practice continued over a period of six months before the forgery was detected.
The ill-gotten money was shared equally by the two. He also forged other checks in favor of the second accused. The Third Circle Court at the Court of Grievances found that they were guilty of the charges of forgery, dishonesty and misuse of power.
The guilty were also ordered to return the embezzled money. However, the court did not find them guilty of misappropriation of public money as charged by the prosecution.
The court explained that their acts could not be construed as misappropriation because they were not directly responsible for the issue of checks or payment of salaries and hence their crimes came only under forgery, dishonesty and misuse of position, the court viewed.
