A lawyer representing a hypermarket chain has been found guilty of embezzling nearly BD6,000 in zakat donations and court fees which he was entrusted with.
The Indian legal expert was sentenced to three years in prison by the High Criminal Court on charges of forging receipts to make it appear he was depositing the funds on behalf of the company as instructed.
The 42-year-old was tasked with using the money to pay outstanding fees corresponding to court cases and lawsuits raised by the multinational group, but instead took the cash for himself.
To cover his tracks, he reportedly fabricated official documents – receipts attributed to the Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Ministry – and submitted them to the company’s accounting division.
The defendant, who represents the company in Bahrain and Egypt, went on to deposit the money – a total of BD5,876 – into his personal bank account, rather than into the court’s coffers.
According to an operations executive at the conglomerate, the man was earlier accused of embezzling zakat and donation money entrusted to him to pay to the Justice Ministry.
This fraud was only uncovered after a thorough audit was conducted to find whether or not the zakat theft was an isolated incident, the Bahraini employee testified.
Criminal charges never went forward, and the case against the expat fell through, he added.
“The embezzlement began in 2020, but was only discovered in February 2025,” a senior Indian accountant at the company told the Public Prosecution.
“He had signed off on the receipts, and filed them with us.”
All the receipts submitted by him were reviewed by the company’s finance department which found two more suspicious documents.
The Court Affairs and Enforcement Directorate’s finance department was asked about the invoices, and they stated that no such receipts had been issued by them, and no record of them existed in the system.
When shown the documents, an employee of the directorate responded that they were not legitimate.
The first fraud came to light when a representative from the Justice Ministry was sent to the company’s headquarters to collect zakat money and coupons for the poor and needy – as it is a regular donor to charitable causes.
Although the accounting department thought that the company’s philanthropic pledges were already paid off, the ministry informed them that no funds were received.
The Indian lawyer was convicted of forging official documents with the intent to profit, knowingly submitting them to the firm, and taking money belonging to the company, thereby causing harm to it.
On top of the three-year prison sentence, the court also ruled to deport the expat after he completed his term.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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