The Attorney General's Office announced on Sunday that the investigating authority had ordered the imprisonment of the Head of the Ras Ajdir Customs Office, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Al-Yaqeen Bank, and his deputy, pending investigation into incidents of corruption and forgery.
A statement from the office said that the imprisonment decisions included the heads of the Customs Review and Procedures Department and four officers from the Customs Guard, as well as seven people responsible for managing compliance affairs, banking operations, external operations, credits and auditing at the bank.
This announcement came after an investigation into information from the General Administration for Combating Smuggling and Drugs about the involvement of 17 customs guard officers in committing forgery crimes, which were replaced by customs documents linked to letters of credit completed within Al-Yaqeen Bank.
The investigation revealed the registration of the Head of the Ras Ijdir Customs Office and the heads of the Audit and Procedures Department; And 14 guards in the same customs department reported customs data stating that seven commercial companies had imported goods into the country but no commodities arrived in reality, which contributed to enabling the owners of the companies to benefit from foreign currency exchange equivalent to 91 million dinars and to collect revenues from trading in foreign exchange in the parallel market.
The investigation body took note of the reality of the abuse of funds contained in the reports of the Financial Information Unit related to the examination of operations at Al-Yaqeen Bank. It was able to prove the contribution of the bank’s business leaders in facilitating incidents of illegal gains for the owners of 49 companies, with a value exceeding twenty million dollars.
The experts’ examination also revealed a defect in credits amounting to 1.2 billion dollars that were completed in violation of the system of granting letters of credit.