Anti-graft body refers 47 cases to court in 2013

AMMAN — The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigated 230 suspected corruption cases in 2013, of which 47 were referred to the prosecutor general, according to the monitoring agency’s annual report.

According to the report, cases investigated by the commission in 2013 varied from misuse and abuse of public office, theft of public money, embezzlement, “wasta” (making undeserved gains through connections), bribery, fraud and counterfeit. There were 91 charges relating to public money theft, making it the most committed crime detailed in the report, followed by fraud (34) and abuse of public office (31).

A high-profile case was the leak of the General Secondary Certificate Examination’s (Tawjihi) question papers through WhatsApp and other social media networks, the report said.

Another was related to the waiving of 82 traffic penalties issued against relatives of a Greater Amman Municipality employee, which was referred by the commission to the prosecutor general.

The report, a copy of which was sent to The Jordan Times, also detailed the cases of several municipality employees who granted government projects to firms they owned as well as charges filed against the Department of Land and Survey for lifting the freeze on land without obtaining approval from the side that issued the freezing order. 

The ACC also referred a Passports and Civil Status Department employee to the Public Security Department’s prosecutor general for investigation over charges relating to the issue of national identification numbers to non-Jordanians using counterfeited documents, the report said.

Of the 71 corruption cases unveiled in the private sector, the ACC pursued a case involving the import of 19 tonnes of rice unfit for human consumption by a private company that provides the military and civil service consumer corporations with foodstuff, according to the report.

The report, which was sent to Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour earlier this week, detailed a total number of 1,808 corruption complaints filed with the ACC in 2013, of which 1,151 were disregarded.