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7 expatriates accused of laundering, financing terrorist operations in Iraq and Syria

The Public Prosecution has charged three Jordanians, two Iranians, and two Egyptians with the formation of an organized criminal group between 7/1/2019 and 10/10/2021 in the State Security Service Department and involving in money laundering activities amounting to 60,334,284.500 dinars, harming the national interests and violating laws, knowing that the first and second defendants, based on the instructions of the seventh defendant, illegally collected cash in Kuwaiti dinars from others through an exchange institution that handles all its administrative and financial affairs, and handed it over to the third and fourth defendants, who deposited the money in the bank accounts of a commercial company, another company that is fictitiously licensed to engage in import and export activity and a commission agent, and transfer it to an exchange company, with the help of the fifth accused.

The sixth accused took advantage of his position in a money exchange company to complete remittances to the beneficiaries, and concealing and disguising their illegal source, their true nature, source, ownership, and related rights, reports a local Arabic daily.

The first six defendants, residents in Kuwait, harmed the national interests of the country, by creating a huge illegal financial system outside the scope of the follow-up of the state’s supervisory authorities, similar to the legitimate systems, and through which they made money transfers to external parties, which made it difficult to identify actual parties involved and who were the beneficiaries by undermining the state’s control systems over them, and its measures related to the detection of money laundering and terrorist financing operations, and that would expose the state to economic risks and damage its financial position and credit rating, as indicated in the investigations.

The Public Prosecution charged the sixth defendant of forgery in bank documents to hide the truth. He also committed forgery in documents with the intent to use them in a way that gives the illusion that they are identical to the truth represented in the invoices for importing goods from abroad attributable to their issuance to the companies detailed in the papers.

In agreement and assistance with the third and fourth defendants in committing the crimes of forgery in the documents by agreeing with them to forge these documents and assisting them by providing them with the data of the existing companies, thus enabling the third and fourth defendants to commit the crimes.

In his capacity as a manager of an exchange company, he deliberately violated the measures in making transfers abroad by conducting financial transactions for the benefit of the company through an exchange company without identifying and verifying the identity of the customer and the actual beneficiary of those transfers.

As for the first and second defendants, in their capacity as managers of a banking institution, they deliberately violated the measures in making transfers abroad illegally.

With regard to the seventh defendant, he colluded with defendants from the first to the sixth and giving them directions and the mechanism through which funds are collected and transferred outside the country, which harmed the national interests of the country.

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