Momentum builds in anti-corruption convictions: Ex Minister confesses to massive bribery

Well, well, well.

There must be a lot of very nervous important people in Muscat right now. The corruption trials are rolling out the "Guilty" verdicts faster than a shwarma shop on a Thursday night, and big people are being sentenced to real jail time. Oman doesn't do nice prisons.*

The latest to fall is a very tall tree indeed - Mohammed bin Nasir Al-Khusaibi was found guilty (he confessed and expressed remorse) of paying bribes worth US$1 million to the (now ex-)undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport and Communication for civil aviation, to win a contract for his company employer CCC- plus likely as local partner himself a big bonus - the first phase of the Muscat International Airport. Mr Al-Khusaibi was (briefly) a Minister, and before that a very powerful figure in the now disbanded but once omnipotent Ministry of National Economy. He's now bunking next to big abdullah the axe murder for 3 years.

Mohammed Al-Amri, who served as said undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport and Communication, was jailed for three years, fined 1.2 million rials and barred from public office for 30 years. The court also sentenced Fathi Alaaiddin, the managing director of aforementioned Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC Oman), to six months in jail and fined him 400,000 rials.

This February, Muscat’s Court of First Instance threw the book at the CEO of state-owned Oman Oil Company, Ahmad al-Wahaibi, a scion of one of the big families very close to the Sultan from the 1970s coup d'etat days, giving him jail sentences totaling 23 years after convicting him of accepting bribes, money laundering and abuse of office. It seems the palaces, sports cars, huge salary and the life of privilege wasn't enough, and young Al Wahaibi felt he needed a few million stashed away. Yanni, you know how it is.

Now, these are just the verdicts issued by Muscat's Court of First Instance, and are still subject to appeal, so who knows what might happen there. If the convictions and sentences are upheld in the first appeals, people will be really looking over their shoulders. Now that the prosecutors are getting successes and confessions, the list of others facing solid evidence of them pocketing the envelopes stuffed with rials will skyrocket as many of those implicated at all levels confess and in turn offer to turn State's Evidence. And Omani courts love a good confession.

As more people talk, and more cell phones and emails are searched, the evidence will mount and the anti-corruption net will inevitably be cast wider and wider, gaining more informants looking to save themselves by confession and implicating others. Say what you like about the internal security boys and girls, but give them this sort of trail to follow and they will be pretty damn efficient, if that's what the person giving the marching orders, er, orders.

And person who gives the ISS those orders is HM, directly. Don't think for a second that the ISS is like the Ministry of Manpower. They get first dibs on recruitment and get shit done when required, especially a special assignment for His Majesty. It is amazing how talkative people get when assisting the ISS and ROP with their enquiries.

Where will it end? Clearly the current crop of prosecutions has the full support of His Majesty. The public verdict against Mohammed bin Nasir Al-Khusaibi is unprecedented both here and abroad. The ripples from this conviction - of someone recently so very very close to absolute power - are causing waves in nearby shorelines: UAE, The Kingdom, Kuwait and Bahrain are all experiencing similar corruption issues, if anything writ much larger.

But His Majesty must be aware of the danger of this becoming a witch hunt driven solely through absolute power as Sultan and direct administrative and executive power too. Much like a run on a bank, if the herd of capital and talent feel that this is going to be 'everyone', or in other words, 'them' rather than someone else, then the herd will panic and stampede for the exits. There's a reason all those palaces on the coast have big ocean going boats in sheds beneath. And private jets. And bank accounts outside Switzerland, if they know whats good for them I guess! Most of these guys are running so much leverage and debt anyway, net capital employed allowing for depreciation over the years is probably 9/10s of fuck-all. So they can split guys. If it gets to the point when you are selectively culling people for relatively minor criminal acts everyone was doing as a matter of common knowledge just to do business, be careful. Yet right now, HM Sultan Qaboos, Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and commander of Oman's Armed Services, Police and Internal Security services is sending a pretty damn crystal clear message. Por encourage les autresSo a few more heads are going to roll. A benign dictatorship may not be how things are being described in the prison exercise yard right now. Your view on the benign part may depend on your perspective, but I reckon 99% of Omanis and residents are more than happy to see a few more heads in the basket right now. Metaphorically speaking.

Email me with any tips. I'm back in the saddle for a while. Lets see where this goes.

* Note. The Americans a few years ago issued Oman a formal complaint at the state of their prison system and the conditions people were held in. When the Americans, people who run an international gulag of secret prisons and who imprison more % of their population than anyone else, are lecturing you on your prison service, you have a pretty shitty prison service. Perhaps the delay in the trials vs the 'Arab Spring' kickoff was not to assemble an independent prosecutors office and gather evidence, but to build the new VIP wing at the prison... wonder who the contractor was, Galfar or CCC? Just an idea chaps, better check that new wing for secret tunnels eh? Not that you could bribe anyone to do that, obviously.