KUWAIT CITY, April 16: The Court of Appeal, presided over by Judge Nasr Salem Al-Haid and including Judges Saud Al-Sanea and Tariq Jad Ali, has sentenced employees of the Kuwait Oil Company, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, and affiliated contracting firms to seven years in prison. The charges stem from their involvement in facilitating the illegal seizure of public funds through the use of fraudulent work orders.

According to the Public Prosecution, the primary defendant, an engineer at the Kuwait Oil Company, along with the second and third defendants, both engineers at the Petroleum Corporation, were found guilty of enabling the unlawful appropriation of KD 228,864. This sum was allegedly seized by two trading and contracting companies owned by their employer.

The defendants were accused of signing 73 fictitious work orders falsely confirming that the two companies had completed assigned tasks, as documented in those orders. In reality, no such work had been carried out. The fraudulent documentation was intended to facilitate the companies' unlawful acquisition of the specified funds.