More corruption

Mohammed Al-Amri, who is denying receiving any money and has pleaded not guilty - but still been found guilty
 
Aish Elaqtta covered this last night, and it was on the front page of the ToO today (link), but as usual the Times of Oman et-al didn't publish the names of those convicted and found guilty. Time to wake up ToO and all the others, people have the internet, and access to Reuters. If they have been found guilty by the courts, then what is the problem with publishing their names?

The Reuters story names the defendants in the case as:

Mohammed bin Nasir Al-Khusaibi, a former Omani Commerce minister (fined RO 800,000, 3 years).
Mohammed Al-Amri, who served as undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport and Communication (fined RO 1,200,000, 3 years jail and ban from public office for 30 years).
And our man-about-town Mr Fathi Alaaiddin of CCC (who's previously already been done for the Duqm road deals and appears to now be a super-grass) got RO 400,000 and 6 months.

The courts found Mohammed bin Nasir Al-Khusaibi guilty of paying a bribe worth $1 million to Mohammed Al-Amri.

It is not exactly clear from the news coverage what Mr Alaaiddin from CCC did in this particular case, but I'm guessing he also paid a bribe to get in on the action, or was in cohorts with Mohammed bin Nasir Al-Khusaibi.

And the action? MC1 for the Muscat International Airport - which is basically all of the main civil works for the airport (runway, taxiways, bridges, interchange, etc) and was awarded at a value of $1.2 Billion in May 2009.

And it worked, because CCC in a JV with TAV (50% of the contractors who were on the Blue Circus City) got the job.

So what happens now? Will CCC have to go through a forensic audit so the true cost of the MC1 Contract can be established? Perhaps CCC should be ordered to hand over ALL of it's profit on the MC1 Contract as compensation to the Ministry of Finance - now that would send a very loud and very clear message don't you think?

le fin.
More corruption More corruption Reviewed by Sythe on Monday, May 19, 2014 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. I think the story in the court testimony went something like this:

    After CCC was awarded MC1 Mr Undersecretary went to Mr Ex Minister (and local CCC partner) and said he it was my recommendation that go you the deal, gimme a million dollars. So Mr EM went to Mr Alaaiddin (CCC's general manager) and told him give the guy a million bucks. Me GM asked his regional head office and they instructed him to go ahead and do it and apparently paid the amount from their Abu Dhabi office.

    Mr GM was in the US when he was subpoenad by the public prosecutor and could have stayed there to escape the trial but came on his own and cooperated fully, hence he's getting shortened sentences in all the cases.

    ReplyDelete
  2. By the way, you should know more about this than I do, but if I recall the difference between CCC/TAV and the lowest bidder, Galfar, was less than $50 million.

    ReplyDelete

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