Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — The Ministry of Commerce and Investment has announced that it had referred as many as 781 tasattur (expatriates doing business in the names of Saudis for certain fees) to the attorney general during the year 2017.

The ministry on Sunday organized at its headquarters in Riyadh a workshop titled: "The National Program to Combat Commercial Tasattur" in the the presence of Dr. Majed Al-Qasabi.

The workshop was told that the tasattur cases handed over to the attorney general for further investigations prior to going to courts during 2017 had increased by about 93 percent over their number in 2016 when they were only 450 cases.

The ministry said the number of inspection tours conducted by is staff to check tasattur increased by about 40 percent from 10,503 in 2016 to 14,701 in 2017.

It said the cases referred to other ministries and government departments went up by 306 percent from 76 cases in 2016 to 309 in 2017.

The workshop discussed the challenges obstructing combating tasattur with a view to reaching concrete solutions that would end the phenomenon.

It also discussed cooperation with all the other concerned government departments to put an end to the phenomenon of tasattur.

The workshop called for further developing the existing systems and legislations on fighting tassatur, intensifying supervision and monitoring of the phenomenon and further intensifying public awareness against it.

It recommended to closely watch the financial resources of companies and establishments through opening bank accounts for them, asking them to deal in receipts and bills which reduce the money remittances and to provide detailed information about the activity of each of the establishments.

The workshop asked for unifying the efforts of all the government departments to combat tasattur, nationalize jobs, ensure consumers with better services and making the Kingdom's market attractive to the foreign investors.