Saudi Arabia’s Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority (Nazaha) announced on Thursday it was completing the prosecution of criminal cases regarding the illegal modification of health statuses, pointing to the involvement of 122 persons in the case.
Earlier this month, Nazaha, said on Twitter that it had monitored advertisements on social networking sites which offered to modify people’s health status from “infected” to “unvaccinated”, “vaccinated with the first dose” and finally “immunized”, in an attempt to circumvent government restrictions on unvaccinated people.
Nazaha said 122 people, including health officials and brokers, were arrested for bribery, forgery and money laundering after they were involved in the case.
On its Twitter account, Nazaha said: “The Authority would like to clarify that after expanding its search and investigation to date, 122 accused individuals were proven involved and all of them admitted to their accusations as follow: nine employees of the Ministry of Health, who are in charge of modifying the statuses were accused of bribery, forgery, and money laundering; 92 individuals, who managed to change their health statuses, were accused of bribery, participation in forgery and money laundering; and 21 mediators coordinated and received bribery, participated in forgery and money laundering.”
“Given that these actions and violations have a dreadful negative impact on the efforts made by the government in combating this pandemic, the Authority affirms on the continuation to pursue the employees, mediators and beneficiaries who are involved in this, and is firmly proceeding with the application of what the law rules against them,” it added.
