Khalaf Al-Harbi

Okaz

 

FOR years, I have been following the brief news reports about the trials of people responsible for the Jeddah rain and flood crisis of November 2009. At first, I used to read these reports with great interest, hoping that the court verdicts would put an end to the floods of corruption in the country.



When the courts protracted, as usual, in considering the cases, I lost the zeal and began to read the reports about the trials just for fun.



I do not deny that I was puzzled by such titles as a “former mayor,” a “former head of a sports club” and a “former undersecretary of the municipality”. I tried to solve the riddle. I worked hard trying to know the names of the accused, but I failed. However, I continued to read the newspaper reports about the trials as a pastime, just like trying to solve crossword puzzles.



Once I read about a bribe of SR60 million given to one of the senior officials in the municipality to expedite the papers of a construction company. The amount then rose to SR100 million. Still, there was no indication of who received the amount.



When I got bored trying to know the names or analyze the figures, I began to look for the light side of the reports on corruption cases. I read about the cartons of honey, luxurious cars and large amounts of money given out as bribes.



These were interesting stories to me, but they were not complete because of the firm instructions issued against publishing reports about corruption cases. The courts were not interested in the funny side of the stories, but only in solid evidence.



Lately, however, corruption reports took a new turn. They began to talk about the role of some expatriates in the rain and flood crisis. Expatriates began to compete with Saudis in corruption, which was supposed to be completely Saudized.



What do we do when corruption itself is corrupted? It was supposed to be an entirely Saudi business, but now expatriates of various nationalities are involved.



A local press report two days ago, said as many as 20 Arab, Asian and European expatriates were also being tried for their various roles in the crisis.



Most of the expatriates under trial were accused of bribing Saudi government officials.



The report said the expatriates were working in contracting companies and they gave out bribes in cash to government officials to grant them construction contracts.



The expatriates either did this on their own initiative, or under the directives of their Saudi superiors.



Some of the expatriates who openly distributed gifts among Saudi employees in a government department believed that it was a common culture and an acceptable tradition in the Kingdom to give presents to government employees.



An Arab engineer bribed a former undersecretary of the municipality and the head of the department of roads, (please go back to the game of names) by furnishing their offices with luxurious furniture.



A few months later, the engineer complained that the municipality officials were holding up the papers of his company on the pretext that construction work was being carried out in the bottom of a valley.



The former undersecretary got furious. He asked: Do we have rains or floods in Jeddah to prevent building in the bottoms of valleys? He asked the Arab engineer to bring him his company’s papers to sign, but the engineer had already had them signed by the head of the department of roads.



The work of the engineer was made easy because his company had kindly furnished the offices of the two senior municipality officials.