"State Security Resumes": 24 Defendants in Money Laundering Networks Sentenced to Prison and Fined 600 Million Dinars
Judicial Editor – The Court of Appeal’s State Security Division, presided over by Advisor Abdullah Al-Sanea and with advisors Mohammed Jafar and Saud Al-Mutairi, sentenced 24 defendants in money laundering networks to imprisonment and fined them 600 million dinars across several cases. In the first case, the court upheld the 10-year prison sentences for 21 defendants, comprising one Kuwaiti national, stateless persons, a Yemeni, Syrians, and an Egyptian, in a money laundering case involving unlicensed banking activities through 17 commercial companies and the forgery of bank documents. The defendants were fined 202 million dinars, equivalent to double the amount involved in the crime, and the companies were fined 101 million dinars, representing the value of the funds involved, following investigations by the State Security Agency and the Financial Investigations Unit.
The prosecution accused the defendants of forming a terrorist group and laundering more than 101 million dinars obtained from crimes harming the country’s national interests, forging bank documents, establishing shell companies to collect expatriates’ salaries in Kuwait, and transferring them to Syria. They were also accused of conducting unofficial banking activities, laundering illicit funds through goods imported from China, and transferring the money again to corporate accounts.
In the second case, the court upheld the 10-year prison sentences for one Kuwaiti national and two Egyptians, fining them 199.588 million dinars, and imposing fines of 99 million dinars on commercial entities “as the value of the money laundering amounts.” The court also permanently banned them from engaging in commercial activities. Meanwhile, one Kuwaiti national and two Egyptians accused of conducting unlicensed banking activities by trading foreign currencies for expatriates’ salaries in Kuwait and transferring them to others in Egypt were acquitted. The charges had alleged that depositing these funds into corporate accounts as legitimate revenues and profits harmed the country’s national interests.
The defendants were apprehended following investigations and sting operations conducted by the General Administration for Combating Terrorism and Money Laundering, in cooperation with the Criminal Execution Investigations Department. Precise security investigations, along with tracking financial flows, revealed the defendants’ involvement in multiple criminal offenses through coordination with several traders in various friendly and sister countries, which resulted in damage to the financial and economic systems and undermined confidence in the banking systems of those countries and in Kuwait.
