The announcement by the US Department of Justice to file a federal criminal case involving a series of accusations against a former Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife has opened the door not to take ‘servants’ to work in the United States of America, because if found guilty the defendant can end up spending 75 years in prison.
In a statement, the US Department of Justice stated that the complaint was filed by the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York and the Director General of the Diplomatic Security Service of the US State Department, and that the Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife are accused before the Manhattan Federal Court of recruiting and employing domestic workers, mistreating them and giving false information to get the US entry visa for three Asian maids.
The statement quoted the US Attorney, Demian Williams, as saying: “This indictment clearly proves that no one is above the law,” noting that “among the accusations is making false statements in order to obtain entry visas for three maids enter America and mistreating them after they were recruited in fraudulent ways to enter the US.
The accusations contained in the lawsuit are based on practices they allegedly committed between 2017 and 2020, and that they provided fraudulent, incorrect data regarding the workers’ salaries and the number of hours they worked per day.
While the statement indicated that the accused are not in pretrial detention so far, it concluded by emphasizing that “all the accusations contained in this criminal case are still in the process of what they called “refuted allegations” and that “the accused is innocent until proven guilty.”
According to the US laws adopted by Congress regarding the prosecution of foreign diplomats, the charges carry maximum penalties in the event of conviction of imprisonment for about 75 years in total calculated as:
5 years in prison for fraud in obtaining visas.
5 years for fraud in foreign labor contracts.
20 years for the practice of forced labor.
10 years for each of the 3 incidents of fraudulent visa issuance.
5 years for each of the 3 fraudulent employment of foreign workers.
