KUWAIT: The interior ministry announced that it has busted three criminal networks operating illegally to issue fake work permits and visas and running an illegal parallel hawala money transfer, and arrested over 20 people in the process. The ministry said in a statement on X on Thursday that security men busted a “criminal network” involved in forging transactions for work permits in favor of private companies against money. Six Egyptians, a Syrian and a Kuwaiti were arrested.
Security men arrested a senior official at the Public Authority of Manpower who issued work permits to recruit Egyptians for bribes between KD 130 and KD 250, the ministry said. The defendants confessed to providing forged work permits to several companies, which managed to illegally recruit manpower from Egypt, it said.
KUWAIT: Members of the hawala network who were arrested.
In the second bust, announced on Wednesday, residency department security men dismantled a network which used licenses of 28 private companies to illegally recruit 382 workers from outside for between KD 800 and KD 1,000 each, in addition to paying officials from the manpower authority amounts of KD 200-250 for each worker, the ministry said. Police arrested three Kuwaiti officials at the manpower authority, two Egyptians and a Palestinian with an Egyptian travel document, it said.
The ministry also said on Thursday that officials from the department combating terrorism and money laundering arrested two Kuwaitis and six Egyptians for operating a network involved in the illegal transfer of money through the so-called “hawala”. Hawala is the unofficial method of transferring money to foreign countries outside the banking system through moneychangers or completely outside the official system to avoid supervision.
Security men found the defendants had made arrangements with merchants in some countries to transfer money through them, thus harming financial and economic systems and undermining banking systems in Kuwait and abroad, the ministry said.
