Suit filed against BCCI

Manama : A lawsuit was filed yesterday to prevent the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCCI) election committee from using the BCCI’s official database for the upcoming elections. A group of businesses and individuals filed the lawsuit regarding the upcoming elections for the BCCI board members that will take place next month. According to them, BCCI’s database should be ditched in favour of the commercial registration database of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism (MOIC) to find information such as the list of eligible voters. Details of the lawsuit were announced by Lawyer Saad Jaber Aldoseri, who is representing the plaintiff.

“The objective of this lawsuit is to compel the head of the elections committee to adopt MOIC’s commercial registration database as the official database, to the exclusion of any other sources,” he said. He claimed that the BCCI’s database has been tampered with and hacked. “It is irrefutable that the BCCI’s electronic system has can be tampered with without the chance of discovery, something that is acknowledged by BCCI’s board minutes of meeting. External auditors found that there are significant security loopholes and vulnerabilities which must be addressed before such systems can be used for the upcoming election,” he said.

He said that the weaknesses found in internal systems and controls were discovered and documented by BCCI’s external auditors and by BCCI’s own internal auditor and chair of the elections committee. “This does not facilitate for effective and accurate elections, and I call upon all that are interested in the progress of BCCI elections to demand the proper sources of information be used with sufficient external monitoring and support,” said Aldoseri. The lawsuit sought removal of BCCI’s administrative staff that are overseeing the elections. 

However, when contacted, Chairperson of the elections committee Jassim Hassan Abdul A’Al told DT News that the lawsuit is based on rumours and not facts. “These are baseless rumours, what has been said is completely untrue.” he said. He said that the election committee will refute the claims in detail in a statement that will be published today.