In one of the strongest sentences issued in recent years against salary fraud within the Kuwaiti public sector, the Arab state’s court of cassation sentenced a civil servant to five years in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of KD312,000 ($1,016,000) for unlawfully pocketing a decade’s worth of salaries from public funds despite being absent from work during that time.

Court documents showed that the civil servant, whose name has not been disclosed by Kuwaiti media, worked in the citizens’ service department but put in no work despite being paid for the last 10 years. He was absent from his workplace and did not perform any of his work duties, but his salary continued to be deposited in his bank account every month. After the anomaly was discovered, authorities opened a criminal case against him for unlawful enrichment and abuse of public funds.

Photo: AI/Kuwait Urdu News

Although the civil servant had been previously acquitted by two other courts of law, the court of cassation overturned those verdicts, considering the evidence against the man irrefutable. Apart from the 5-year prison sentence, the man was also ordered to return the collected salaries amounting to KD104,000 ($339,000), as well as double that amount as a penalty.

According to the Al Qabas Arabic newspaper, the ruling is one of the strongest ever issued in recent years and comes amid concentrated efforts by Kuwait to combat salary fraud and administrative corruption.

Such cases are more common than you think. Earlier this year, we wrote about an Italian teacher who had been on sick leave continuously for 16 years, as well as about this French woman who sued her company for paying her to do nothing for 20 years.