Forgery: Manpower agent, partner get jail in Bahrain

Manama : A Bahraini manpower agent has been sentenced to five years in jail for his involvement in forging official documents.

The agent was sentenced by the First High Criminal Court on Thursday to five years imprisonment and another verdict of one-year imprisonment was issued for the defendant’s female partner in crime.

Court files showed that they together kept more than 800 passports belonging to Asian labourers at a manpower agency.

Both defendants were prosecuted for submission of fake formal documents to an official authority and the misuse of information technology.

The case was discovered when Industry, Commerce and Tourism Ministry lodged a complaint to the Public Prosecution against the defendants for submitting fake official documents through its online portal “Sijilat”.

When the company was inspected by the police as per the prosecution’s order, a total of 822 passports and 135 ID cards were found. 

Further investigations showed that the labourers were recruited through 49 fake Commercial Registrations (CR)s.

“The defendant has a history of fraud cases in his criminal record. It has been proved that his sister-in-law, who worked with him in the same office, is his accomplice in  this  case,” court  files   revealed.

The files also showed that the defendants had defrauded a Bahraini woman by issuing 28 CRs for fake companies using her name and password, while informing her that they only issued one CR for a construction company and paid her BD300 monthly rent for it.

After issuing the fake CRs, the suspects sold Residency Permits (RP or visa) for BD1, 500 each. This means that they at least made BD1, 233, 000 out of the fraud.