Tag Archives: Corruption in Oman

Blacklist companies, not just punish corrupt officials – Saleh Al Shaibany 1

Saleh Al Shaibany

Blacklist companies, not just punish corrupt officials –

Sunday Beat – Times of Oman – March 16, 2014

Saleh Al Shaibany

http://www.timesofoman.com/News/Article-31123.aspx

RELATED STORIES 

  Sunday Beat: Oman   needs strict laws to combat corruption

  Sunday Beat: The   corrupt should not escape the consequences

Real justice will not be done until companies whose senior   officials have been convicted on corruption charges are either blacklisted   for a number of years from bidding for the government tenders, or made to pay   heavy fines.

We should follow the regulations the rest of the world   does to make companies accountable for the actions of their employees   representing them.

The excuse that the board of directors cite by saying,   “we knew nothing about it”, does not wash when it is their job to   know about it. It defies logic when hundreds of thousands of rials disappear   in the company’s bank accounts and the chairman says “it escaped my   notice” or simply that “it was hidden from my view” and the   courts believe that statement. A CEO or a managing director will not   authorise the accountant to use the company’s money to bribe a government   official unless he has approval from someone in the board. There is always   that prior arrangement of “you go ahead with it but I will deny it if   you are caught” type of thing which means the bribe had the blessing   from the top.

For justice to go around a full 360 degrees instead of   doing a semi circle, the Oman Tender Board (OTB) must ban the bribing   companies for at least 10 years from any future activities. It is no excuse   that these companies, just because they employ hundreds of Omanis, should get   away with it. If they are allowed to bid again, then they should pay a fine   equivalent to the bid value of the contract in which they were accused of   offering bribe.

Otherwise, it will be morally wrong when one or two   employees, acting under certain instructions, should be made scapegoats for   something bigger than them without any consequences to the company   itself.

The shocking thing is that while the company is being   investigated for bribery charges, it is still in the running to win the next   contract of the project they had bid for prior to the court case. It is like   telling a school boy “don’t climb this tree again but you can climb the   other one at the back but make sure you don’t fall this time.”

Then there is a question of the auditing companies. How   does it escape their expert scrutiny when a large amount of cash was not   accountable for? If a company is listed in the Muscat Securities Market (MSM)   or in the case of a government organisation, surely the auditors must spot   any financial irregularities. If not, where are they looking?

To say that the financials are hidden from their full   scrutiny is again a lame excuse for not doing their job or simply taking for   granted that “all is well” when it is not, as we now find out. For   listed companies, it is the investors’ money that is used to bribe for   contracts where the board of directors are the trustees. It is not business   ethics, as one insider speculated. “Bribery money is the board of   directors’ way of increasing profits for their investors.”

What about the role of the State Financial and   Administrative Audit Institution when it comes to scrutinise the accounts of   the government’s organisations and their employees? We expect such an   institution with wide powers to put under the spotlight any financial   irregularity committed by officials, especially those at the very top, to act   decisively and timely to win the public’s confidence.

If we argue if we should make board of directors of   private companies responsible for their actions, then it makes perfect sense   to make heads of the ministries take responsibility for the spate of   corruption cases in their patches. If their response is that “we were   not aware of it”, then questions should be asked about their competence.   Somebody else should be appointed who will be “aware of it” when it   starts to happen again.

To sum it all up, corrupt companies should not simply   plead ignorance and blame it on their managers to survive to make money   another day. Similarly, heads of ministries cannot shrug their shoulders by   claiming lack of knowledge. It is part of their responsibility and the buck   stops with them. The time for cover-up has long passed. 

You can get in touch with the writer: saleh@timesofoman.com

bribery-in-business[1]bribe 2

REPRODUCED ARTICLE

Corruption in Energy Sector Hard Nut to Crack: Minister Reply

A Personal Note!, About The Nation, Deep Soul Searching Article, Difficult and Complex Article To Write, From The Press, Good Article, How To Live In This World!, My Last Oman Observer Article, Opinion, Reproduced Articles, Sensitive Critical Topics, Wipe My Tears! • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Corruption in Energy Sector hard nut to crack: Minister

Saleh Al Shaibany – Times of Oman – saleh@timesofoman.com

March 4th 2014

Rumhy Restucci

Dr Rumhy and Restucci of PDO

Muscat: Corruption in the energy sector is a hard nut to crack and gave no assurances that it would not happen again in the future, said Minister of Oil and Gas Dr. Mohammed bin Hamad Al Rumhy yesterday.

Answering a question about whether as oil minister he should take responsibility of the corruption in his sector, Rumhy said: “I am taking responsibility but I am not taking the blame for it”

The minister of oil and gas said he was “disappointed~ about the corruption in the oil and gas sector but the measures have been in place to prevent bribery for a number of years.

“I have personally asked the State Auditors since year 2000 to audit the oil and gas sector. But I don’t think we have anything in place to eradicate corruption to a zero level,” he said

“It is happening now and it will happen again in the future. We cannot monitor and regulate human behaviour and follow people around to find what they are doing all the time,” Rumhy told reporters in the annual oil and gas meeting.

A number of people have been sentenced on corruption charges in the last three months after officials of Oman’s premier energy sector including the country’s flagship oil producing company, PDO and its investment arm Oman Oil Company, were convicted of ‘phising’ off millions of Rials into private accounts.

Raoul Restucci, PDO Managing Director, answering a question said “We are shocked and angry but (corruption) represent a small number of employees. I don’t think we should control more but what we need is to learn from it. What is also needed is consequences management to make people more responsible to what they do”

END

See this also – http://majidall.com/as-to-why-i-had-left-my-last-oil-company-loc/

– Dated December 26, 2009 – As To Why I Had Left My Last Oil Company (LOC)!

Or Why I Am So Angry A Person!

Quote – Event – 1992 – This is the guy I had clashed with in the article The Lady In Red. I had this fear and phobia that I was going to be terminated – and I went in with trembling fear and trepidations that I would lose my job now – and was anyway prepared because as far as I know I had not stolen even one Baizas from The Company – and had not overpaid any Staff or Company – though my budget in my last job was over 16 million USA Dollars per year – and I had full control of this budget – unquote

Omani CEO jailed for 23 years in graft case: Court Reply

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OOC boss gets 23 years jail term in graft case

Thursday 27th, February 2014 / 22:47

Written by Oman Observer  in Head stories

Ordered to pay RO 8 million fine; 2 others sentenced – 

By Zakaria Fikry –

MUSCAT — The Court of First Instance in Muscat yesterday sentenced the CEO of Oman Oil Company (OOC) to 23 years in jail, a fine of RO 8 million and ordered him to be sacked from his post permanently in connection with the Sohar Aromatics case.
The second accused in the case — who is a former adviser to the ministry of national economy — was awarded 10 years in jail, a fine of RO 4 million and deportation for a life-long after severing his term.

The third accused — CEO of South Korea’s LGI Corporation — was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and a fine of RO 4 million as well as deportation for a life-long after serving his jail term. The court also ordered the restoration of $8 million to the public treasury and that the defendants settle the litigation.

Last December the Public Prosecution accused the CEO of Oman Oil Company with abuse of office, accepting bribes from LGI to facilitate a $1.6 billion pact for construction of the a petrochemical aromatics plant at Sohar industrial port for the Korean firm. In return the defendant took $8.4 million in bribe which he deposited in a Swiss bank. The defendant was convicted of exploiting his position for personal interests, bribery and money laundering

The second defendant was convicted of taking bribes and the third — Korean national CEO of LGI Corporation — was found guilty of offering bribe to procure the contract.

*****

Omani CEO jailed for 23 years in graft case: Court

(Reuters) –

A court sentenced the CEO of state-owned Oman Oil Company to a total of 23 years in jail on Thursday for accepting bribes, abuse of office and money laundering, the most severe punishment meted out in a series of corruption trials that began last year.

The judge at the Court of First Instance in Muscat also convicted Adel al-Raisi, a former aide to the minister of the now-dissolved economy ministry, of organizing a bribe made by a senior official at a South Korea-based firm to Oman Oil Company CEO, Ahmad al-Wahaibi, and sentenced him to 10 years in jail.

The court found the vice CEO of the Korean-based LGI, named in court as Myung Jao Yoo, guilty of paying $8 million to a Caribbean-registered company owned by Wahaibi after winning a billion rial petrochemical project in Sohar Port in Oman.

Myung was also jailed for 10 years. LGI was not immediately available for comment on the court’s verdict.

Oman’s Sultan Qaboos has waged an anti-graft campaign to defuse mass protests in several Omani cities in 2011 that were mainly directed against graft and to demand jobs, issues that fuelled uprisings around the Arab world in the same year.

More than 20 civil servants and businessmen have gone on trial in Oman since last year.

Court documents said the latest case dated back to 2011, when Omani authorities were informed by their Swiss counterparts about suspicious transactions involving Wahaibi’s Swiss bank account. The trial began in December last year.

Oman Oil Company is an investment arm of the government of Oman with over 40 investments inside and outside Oman.

Wahaibi admitted in court to receiving money from Myung but pleaded not guilty to the charge of taking bribes, saying he “didn’t know why LGI transferred $8 million” into his company.

Raisi also pleaded not guilty. He said his confessions during questioning were not genuine

and that he only admitted brokering the deal and receiving the money under pressure.

Myung admitted in court that he had received money from Wahaibi but said he did not remember why. “Maybe it was a birthday gift. I don’t remember,” he told the court.

Apart from the prison sentences, Raisi and Myung were each fined 4 million rials. Myung would be deported after serving his sentence, the court ruled.

Oman Oil Company said in a statement it was committed to “enforcing a stringent code of ethics and corporate governance practices across all levels of the organization”.

Its Deputy CEO, Mulham Al Jarf, said he was given the “rights, responsibilities and authorities of the CEO in August 2013 to ensure that the business operations of the company remain uninterrupted,” the statement added.

At the hearings, Wahaibi admitted that after the cash was deposited into the accounts of his company, he had given the two other defendants their shares of the cash.

The court sentenced Wahaibi to 10 years in jail and fined him 4 million rials ($10.39 million) for accepting bribes, 10 years for money laundering and one million rials and three years in prison for abuse of office.

The court also confiscated all the bribe money in his frozen Swiss bank account. Lawyers confirmed Wahaibi’s sentences would run successively.

($1 = 0.3850 Omani rials)

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