The Kingdom’s implementation courts have ordered debtors to repay a total of SR150 million in claims to creditors who made the demand last year.

According to reports, the implementation court in Riyadh ordered the imprisonment of more than 800 people for failing to restore rights claimed by owners from the beginning of the current Hijri year to-date, a local daily said.

The judicial rulings related to unpaid checks, notes and bonds and a variety of funds, including fixed and movable properties, totaling more than SR150 million.

In a related development, the implementation court in Buraidah, Qassim region, has ordered the owner of a distressed property investment company to repay more than SR94 million to investors.

The owner of the distressed property company was given a five-day grace period to repay the said money or face imprisonment, the media said.

The implementation courts are playing a pivotal role since their inception and have become a milestone in the development of the judiciary in the Kingdom. According to a judicial source, the implementation courts are now considered an essential part of the justice process.

The implementation system stipulates that a debtor (defaulter) is liable to a maximum of seven years in prison if he refuses to implement a ruling or declines to disclose his source of earnings. The debtor also faces imprisonment if he inadvertently impedes the implementation of the ruling by filing lawsuits, the daily said.