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An American couple is on trial for laundering almost half a million dinars of company revenue rather than distributing the money to shareholders, the High Criminal Court heard.
The businessman and his wife are accused of trying to give legitimacy to funds taken from the accounts of a venture they co-owned with Chinese investors.
The Lower Criminal Court earlier convicted the couple of embezzling money entrusted to them by withholding the profits from the investors – instead transferring BD468,831 to bank accounts belonging to their own businesses.
They were sentenced to a year in prison. The ruling was made in absentia as they had left the country in June 2022 and have not returned since.
There is an Interpol arrest warrant awaiting to be served, according to the Public Prosecution, and they remain on the run.
The two companies that they own are standing trial alongside them as co-defendants in the current court case, being charged as an ‘artificial person’.
In the current court case, the 58-year-old man and 59-year-old woman are now accused of laundering the embezzled money that they were convicted of swindling in the earlier court case.
They allegedly attempted to conceal the origin of the funds and made them appear as legitimate, by transferring the funds into their personal and joint bank accounts.
They then reportedly recycled the money through various banks, before ultimately sending the money abroad, wiring it to bank accounts in the US and Greece under their names, as well as to India.
Prosecutors allege that they withdrew part of the money and used it on purchases and payments while they were still in Bahrain.
The two companies – one specialised in electronics and the other in real estate – were charged with being used for the crimes, as a result of the defendants’ actions, who were their owners and signatories.
One of the companies has since been liquidated, according to commercial registration (CR) portal Sijilat, and another has been deactivated since the CR was not renewed.
“The first defendant is the owner of the company which fell victim to their embezzlement, for which they were tried in the Lower Criminal Court,” a National Centre for Financial Investigations officer earlier testified.
“He exploited CRs he owned (the third and fourth defendants) and his wife carried out transactions to rotate the money through their various accounts, as signatory for the victim company.
The ‘victim company’ is a large Chinese corporation, specialised in manufacturing electric cables and it had entrusted the American defendant to open a branch in Bahrain.
“Through a financial analysis, it appears that they laundered BD482,051 from the victim company’s accounts, for their own gain,” the officer added.
“The laundered funds were intermittently mixed in with additional money that does not appear to be of illicit origin, but it was folded in and combined with money involved in the crime, to make it harder to track and to legitimise the stolen amounts.”
Court documents state that the Bahrain Chamber for Dispute Resolution (BCDR) earlier ruled that the defendants must return BD468,831 to the Chinese company.
High Criminal Court judges set February 24 as the date a verdict will be issued in the case.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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