Cairo: Kuwaiti police had arrested two civil servants working at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on suspicion of job exploitation and bribe-taking to condone violations amid a relentless clampdown on corruption in the country.
A broker in receiving the bribes was arrested too, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Qabas reported.
The suspects were caught receiving KD50,000 ($163,000) as part of a total of KD200,000 in an agreed bribe. The case was revealed in cooperation between the ministries of interior and commerce.
In recent years, Kuwait has stepped up a crackdown on white-collar corruption.
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Earlier this month, a Kuwaiti court sentenced a communications official to seven years in prison and ordered him be dismissed from his post on charges of money laundering, embezzling state money of KD6 million and forgery of official documents.
The criminal court also ordered the official, whose name was not given, to pay a total fine of KD18 million.
The court confirmed the ruling that was earlier issued in the defendant's absentia while he was outside the country. He returned to Kuwait and turned himself in to authorities, according to Al Qabas.
The money embezzled over four years had been collected from subscribers and handed over to him in his capacity as an administrative official at the Communications Ministry's accountancy department. He had deposited the money into his own bank account instead of the ministry's.
Last month, a Kuwaiti court upheld four-year imprisonment sentencing each handed down to a Kuwaiti food inspector and an expatriate for involvement in a bribery case.
The appeals court also ordered the inspector be dismissed from her job and pay a fine of KD4,000. The expat was convicted of brokering bribery in return for revoking violation notices at the central market in the Hawlli governorate, south of Kuwait City.
Also last month, Kuwaiti authorities uncovered attempts led by a civil servant charged with receiving money and using forgery to place expatriates on Kuwaitis' sponsorship lists without their sponsors' knowledge.
Late last year, Kuwait's highest court confirmed jail sentences and dismissal of seven former judges on corruption charges in a case that surfaced around three years earlier.
