After a delay of 30 years, the Ministry of Commerce issued a decision prohibiting the sale or purchase of cars in cash if their price exceeds 1,500 dinars. This long-awaited step came within broader moves in the same direction to improve the country’s reputation in international assessments and contain suspicions of “money laundering and financing terrorism.” Without it, the situation would have remained the same, knowing that the huge amounts of cash that leak into the banking system are mostly drug money!
The ministry’s measures will inevitably limit the inflation of accounts and the fictitious paper sales, which in recent years have come to include several fields, from watches and real estate, to the sale of camels and medicines, and others.
It was striking the mistake made by one of the senior colleagues, when he downplayed, in an article, the seriousness of money laundering cases, especially the Malaysian fund, on the pretext that it was not our case, and “may God reward whoever did it,” and that the money laundering law was imposed on us by Western countries, and we have no interest in implementing it, and that the money laundered by the accused is not our money, and the accused violated the money laundering law, and profited from the operation, but they did not steal Kuwaiti money (!!)
Courts in Kuwait have previously sentenced five defendants in the 1MDB case to prison. Kuwait was one of the most prominent stations in the chapters of the case, which ended with the sentencing of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Abdul Razak to prison, on the background of embezzling funds from the sovereign fund.
In the summer of 2020, the Kuwaiti Public Prosecution filed money laundering cases against five defendants, after a British newspaper published an extensive investigation into the crime.
The Malaysian sovereign fund was established in 2009 with a capital of one billion dollars. In 2015, the authorities began investigating the theft of 700 million from the fund, and the investigation revealed that it went to the prime minister and his family. However, it turned out that the issue is bigger than that, and that it is one of the biggest financial scandals in the world, with more than 3.5 billion dollars embezzled between 2009 and 2015!
It is not known how the relationship between the Sheikh and “Joe Low”, the mastermind of the largest embezzlement operation in history, began, who visited Kuwait in 2016, where money began to flow into Kuwait after that, and to several accounts, starting from September 2016.
At that time, the US Attorney General announced the prosecution of Joe Low, and the embezzlement scheme from the Malaysian sovereign fund was exposed to the world, but that did not prevent Jho and his partner, the sheikh, from trading and laundering the tainted money, to cover up whatever embezzlement could be covered.
In 2018, Malaysia contacted the Kuwaiti Financial Investigation Unit to investigate the role of the sheikh and the reason for the inflation of his bank accounts. The investigations revealed transfers from foreign companies to Kuwaiti companies owned by him, amounting to 343 million dinars, which were laundered in the banking system, on the basis that they were consulting fees. This was followed by a transfer abroad worth 200 million dinars, leaving 143 million, which the accused sheikh transferred to accounts inside and outside Kuwait, in an attempt to disguise its source, and spend part of it on purchasing luxury items!
From all of this, we see that money laundering, whether domestic or foreign, is a serious international crime that must be pursued. Its goal may be to fight terrorism and protect the West, as our colleague mentioned, but it remains a serious international crime that benefits drug dealers, arms brokers, and terrorists.
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By Ahmed alsarraf
