Kuwait Loses 1.2 Billion Dinars A Year Due To Corruption

The US State Department's annual report on human rights in Kuwait for 2021 focuses light on incidents of government officials abusing their positions and escaping punishment despite all evidence of corruption.

According to a local Arabic daily, the report cited a lack of government transparency, stating that despite the existence of a law punishing corruption, the government did not effectively implement it, revealing numerous reports of government corruption during the year, which observers believe officials were involved in corrupt practices.

According to the sources, the Anti-Corruption Authority 'Nazaha' is widely believed to lack the legal authority to implement strict anti-corruption measures because it lacks the legal authority to conduct secret surveillance, execute search warrants, arrest suspects, or enforce compliance with investigation demands.

The report discussed the prevalence of bribery, citing reports that people had to pay middlemen to access regular government services, as well as multiple reports of corruption in the procurement and bidding processes for valuable government contracts.

The report also cited the Kuwait Economic Society, which stated in August that the state loses about 1.2 billion dinars annually due to corruption, citing numerous serious corruption cases, including government corruption, while Nazaha continued to refer government officials involved in corrupt practices to the Public Prosecution Office, including officers from the Ministry of Interior accused of falsifying official documents.

The report highlighted important issues related to human rights violations, noting that the government took important steps in some cases to prosecute and punish officials who committed these violations, whether in the security services or elsewhere in the government, where 591 complaints were filed against Interior Ministry employees, 413 of which were investigated, and 71 of which resulted in disciplinary action and 96 were referred to courts, but impunity is a problem in corruption cases.

He also mentioned ‘stateless individuals' (the bedouin) who are illegally resident in the country; according to UNHCR estimates, there were 92,000 persons in this category in the country in 2020.

The Communications and Information Technology Commission blacklisted 82 websites last year, while lifting the ban on 13 others, according to the study.

According to the news, the Ministry of Justice revealed that seven female judges have taken on leadership roles in supervising misdemeanor court departments throughout Kuwait.

The government nominated 14 new female prosecutors to the Public Prosecutor's Office in November, bringing the overall number of prosecutors in the office to 64.

Courts made decisions in 198 cases of domestic abuse, according to the study, and some of the accused were acquitted while others were sentenced to jail sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years.

It stated that NGOs regularly reported cases of domestic violence against women and that courts handed down sentences in 991 domestic violence cases, including 662 cases of violence against women. Some defendants were acquitted, while others received sentences ranging from six months to twenty years in prison, and some received death sentences.

In terms of child abuse, the report mentioned the Ministry of Health's Child Protection Office's efforts to monitor and follow up on cases of child abuse. Boys and girls have about equal numbers of cases.

The research questioned Kuwait's HIV policy, saying that the authorities have deported thousands of foreign residents living with HIV since 2016 and that local media stated that roughly 200 foreign residents are deported annually due to their HIV diagnosis during the year.

The Ministry of Interior detained 95 employers for providing residency permits in exchange for money, according to the report, and deported 4,896 individuals whose legal status had been forfeited.

The report stated that several media reports highlighted the problem of residence permits or "visas," where companies and recruitment agencies collude to "sell visas" to potential workers, and the jobs and companies associated with these visas frequently do not exist, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitation on the black market, where they are forced to work for low wages while paying for the fake "visa"; visa traffickers and illegal labor gangs are arrested almost every week.

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