14-07-2025
Trio Jailed, Fined In Acquiring Kuwaiti Citizenship By Deceit
KUWAIT CITY, July 13: The Criminal Court closed one of the most serious cases of forgery and tampering with national identification cards. The court, headed by Counselor Mutab Al-Ardi, sentenced a Kuwaiti citizen and two Gulf nationals to seven years in prison with hard labor for forging Kuwaiti citizenship and tampering with official documents over 30 years -- from 1994 to 2024. The court also fined them and ordered them to pay a total of more than KD473,000. The penalties include the dismissal of the Kuwaiti defendant from public office, repayment of KD15,912, and a fine of double that amount. Another defendant was ordered to repay KD132,142 and a similar fine.
According to the investigation results, the Public Prosecution charged one of the defendants with forging a nationality certificate, birth certificate, and civil identification card in the name of another defendant who claimed to be his son. This was done in agreement with another defendant, a Gulf national (the other defendant's real father ) to obtain official Kuwaiti documents based on false information. The investigations indicated that the Kuwaiti defendant exploited his position as a public employee to unlawfully seize money, including child allowances from the Ministry of Health and sums from the Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS) totaling more than KD13,000.
He used fraudulent methods to falsely claim that another defendant was his son who, in turn, fraudulently obtained a housing loan of KD4,000 from Kuwait Credit Bank (KCB); a rental allowance of KD18,600 and an additional KD109,542 from the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM), benefiting from privileges allocated to Kuwaiti citizens. Investigations conducted by a Nationality and Passports investigation officer revealed that the defendants agreed to include the other defendant's son in the Kuwaiti's citizenship file, exploiting the goodwill of employees at the Nationality and Travel Documents General Department. The other defendant's photos on his citizenship documents matched his official identification documents in his Gulf country, according to the forensic evidence report
