A civil servant and an employee of a real estate company are on trial for allegedly receiving and giving a bribe to speed up property registration paperwork, the High Criminal Court heard.
The Bahraini public employee stands accused of accepting a BD2,800 bribe from a Syrian official at a property management business to ‘fast-track’ the issuing of documents for a new residential tower in Juffair.
The 44-year-old Bahraini allegedly tried to use his influence as a former Survey and Land Registration Bureau (SLRB) employee to help his associate, though he had been transferred to another organisation.
According to the SLRB, the fast-tracking service was discontinued in 2022, a year before the alleged crime was committed.
“The first defendant solicited and accepted a reward for doing work he claimed fell within his job duties,” the Public Prosecution accused. “He pretended to specialised in taking necessary action to speed up processing of real estate documents corresponding to housing units sold by a company - the second defendant’s employer.
“He asked for BD2,800 to complete this work, to which the second defendant agreed, transferring the money in several instalments.”
Prosecutors charged the 30-year-old Syrian of collaborating with the civil servant to commit the crime of bribery, by providing him with the needed information and documents, as well as giving him the money.
An SLRB executive testified to the prosecution about the fast-tracking service previously offered by the bureau, but has since become defunct due to a payment dispute between employees and management.
The Land Registration Directorate official stated that the civil servant could not have offered the service to anyone, because it ceased to exist by 2023.
He said that the defendant’s ties with the SLRB had also ended, as he had been moved to the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) in late 2022.
“The defendant no longer worked in the Land Registration Directorate and had no ability to speed up any processing. He should have connected the company to the directorate,” the Bahraini top official stated. “In the past, companies that needed thousands of transactions to be processed used to benefit from a service to speed up these transactions.
“The fast-tracking required employees to stay after-hours to complete the workload, so companies paid them overtime wages, beginning in 2014.
“In 2016, the administration was made aware of the matter, and decided to formalise the procedure. In 2019, it was proposed that companies pay the SLRB, and that employees would be given 10 per cent of the payment. However, employees did not accept this percentage proposed and refused to work overtime, and fast-tracking ended in 2022.”
Another SLRB employee added that companies which made use of the service had up to 3,000 ownership and land deeds at a time to be processed, since they had large real estate plans and residential buildings with many units.
The Bahraini defendant admitted to having been appointed at RERA in December 2022, before the alleged crime was committed.
“The second defendant would ask me to follow up on the status of paperwork corresponding to his employer,” he said. “My transfer to RERA didn’t stop me from helping him out, since SLRB and RERA’s headquarters are in the same building.”
Meanwhile, the 30-year-old Syrian stated that issuance of ownership deeds for a large project was delayed and that he asked the Bahraini for assistance.
He claimed to not know about the procedure of fast-tracking and that he trusted his ‘friend’ (co-defendant) and did not question his methods.
The hearing was adjourned to January 26 for defence arguments.
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