A court in Jeddah recently acquitted the president of a famous sports club in the city of money laundering charges, local media reported. The court gave the prosecutor general 30 days to appeal the ruling at the Court of Appeals in Makkah.

Reliable sources were quoted by a local daily as saying that over the next few days two heads of well-known sport clubs will also make an appearance at the courts, charged with money laundering. These charges were leveled against them on the backdrop of the flood disaster that hit Jeddah in 2008.

The prosecutor general has begun to file lawsuits against the defendants, who allegedly tried to seize vacant plots of land worth millions of riyals with the help of a number of persons and government officials before being stopped by the competent authorities. The lawsuits will implicate a number of sports men in the Western Province, the sources said.

The indictment against them included allowing citizens to build in floodplains, the loss of human lives and the destruction of public property, as well as committing other crimes such as bribery, squandering public money and negligence, according to the sources.

More than 100 people died and another 350 were injured in the aftermath of the Jeddah flood disaster, which unearthed a trail of corruption and bribery that shook Saudi citizens to their core.