The third criminal division in Jeddah’s administrative court has recently issued a ruling on a bribery case linked with land in Dahban.

Five people were sentenced to different terms, a local newspaper reported. The notary public was given a seven-year prison term, while a lawyer and judge were each handed a five-year sentence. Two of the the businessmen who were implicated in the case received five years and one year respectively and a fine of SR 10,000 and the third businessman was jailed for three years with a fine of SR 200,000.

Earlier, the administrative court pressed charges of bribery and falsification of the title rights of a land in Dahban against the five men. Four of the indicted men were accused of aiding the first defendant in abusing his authority to forge the facts on the land deed.

The notary public denied the charges, saying that he had canceled the deed once he realized it was a violation of the law, adding that the Ministry of Justice canceled the deed based on the documented letter he sent himself. However, the other defendants asserted that the process of changing the ownership of the land occurred at the notary public’s place of residence.

For the past several weeks, the court hearings have been witnessing the insistence of the second defendant on having paid SR 60 million to three persons by documented checks, which was considered bribery for the ownership of the land deed without the existence of the rightful original title.

The second defendant said that the notary had asked him to bring a third person as the salesman who sold the second defendant the land so the latter can sell it for SR 160 million. “I later found that there is a problem concerning the whole transaction,” he added.