The Attorney General’s Office reported yesterday that the chairman of Waha Oil Company has been detained for several charges, including a LD 770 million contract fraud.
The Attorney General said preliminary research by its Deputy Public Prosecutor revealed that the Waha chairman refrained from taking the company’s interest and the public interest as a sole purpose in his actions.
This included deliberately concluding a contract worth LD 769, 991, for establishing mitigating barriers for the movement of sea waves off the Sidra oil port, which should have cost no more than LD 339 million.
In order to achieve illicit benefits for himself and others, the chairman violated the governing legislation by assigning the rehabilitation of the Dahra oil field to a contractor established in 2022, and disbursing US$ 140 million during 2023 and 2024, despite its lack of expertise required for the work entrusted to it.
The Waha chairman also deliberately abused his functional authority by disbursing US$ 100 for an execution agency contracted by the company to complete the drilling of oil wells over periods of up to three years, which resulted in the company being unable to manage this amount.
In the context of the same procedures, the investigator dealt with reports in which it was referred to the company’s contracting to rent residential buildings for employees in charge of monitoring its work at an amount of LD 50,000 per month.
When the Public Prosecution completed the interrogation of the accused, it ordered his pretrial detention and carried out measures to prosecute the remaining contributors to the incidents under investigation.
It ordered measures to suspend the contracts in question, conduct a review of contracts by the Audit Bureau, and a number of specialists in the oil and gas industry, whom the investigating authority deemed sufficient in examining the fairness of the contracts.
