High-profile corruption case highlights Nazaha’s success
The public sacking and rebuke last month of the president of a major state university sent a clear message that Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption campaign is entering a new phase of naming and shaming corrupt officials. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has set the tone from the top — zero tolerance for corruption. And he has repeatedly warned that this campaign will only get tougher.
The royal decree issued on Oct. 26 naming the corrupt senior official was unusually stern and candid as it relieved the university’s president of his duties, based on reports by the Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority, known as Nazaha, for crimes that included embezzlement, money laundering, forgery and abuse of his office. In addition to losing his job, he will be held accountable for those offenses.
The Saudi press has since published details of charges against him, including the theft of tens of millions of dollars from university funds and the unlawful hiring of dozens of his relatives and cronies.
While this case is unusual in that the name of the official and charges against him were made public, it is not an isolated case. Nazaha, Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption watchdog, provides monthly briefings about the cases it is investigating. So far in 2022 (up to Oct. 25), it has conducted 45,164 oversight visits, launched 3,204 investigations and arrested 1,170 individuals, both Saudis and expatriates. Some detainees were released on bail according to the Criminal Procedures Law. The cases involved officials and private individuals working for the ministries of defense, interior, justice, foreign affairs, health, education, and municipal affairs, among other government entities. Their crimes included bribery, abuse of office and authority, money laundering, embezzlement and forgery.
Nazaha’s work is unprecedented in Saudi Arabia in terms of both caseload and the public manner in which it conducts its work. The organization reports directly to the king and crown prince and clearly has their support. It also enjoys widespread support from the public, who have been complaining about corruption for a long time.
The publicity surrounding Nazaha’s work is unusual in a region where fighting corruption, when it happens, is usually done quietly. The organization’s aggressive tactics are meant to uproot a culture of corruption that permeates the public sector, as in most developing and industrial countries.
The charges announced against the university president last month revealed the abandon with which some government officials abuse their authority, embezzling astronomical amounts of public funds, accepting bribes and favoring relatives and cronies with jobs and lucrative contracts. Money laundering, with which he is also charged, adds a security risk in terms of potential links to organized crime and terrorism.
By fighting corruption in this manner, the government is trying to tackle its corrosive economic, social and political effects.
Corruption is costly and not merely in terms of the actual amounts of money stolen. Corruption can hurt economic growth, something Nazaha is aware of, as its billboards on major roads proclaim. An International Monetary Fund study estimates that bribery costs about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion annually, or approximately 2 percent of global gross domestic product.
Corruption can limit the government’s ability to encourage investment. Bribery can be seen as an illegal tax on investment, to be added to its actual cost, making it less appealing to potential investors. Bribes can also create significant uncertainty for investors and serve as a disincentive, thus acting against Saudi Arabia’s recently launched strategies aimed at encouraging greater investment and diversification.
Studies have shown that, in developing countries with greater levels of corruption, infant mortality and dropout rates are especially high, partly due to less spending on health and education.
In addition, these crimes, if not curbed, weaken respect for the rule of law and can lead to distrust in government programs and a lack of confidence in its policies.
All of these aspects make it imperative to bolster Saudi Arabia’s uphill battle against corruption. It is already inspiring that some of its neighbors, even some adversaries, have called for similar forceful campaigns to uproot malfeasance from public office.
Despite its serious campaign to fight corruption over the past several years, not enough is known outside Saudi Arabia about those great efforts. Corruption perception indexes produced by international organizations do not seem to accurately reflect Nazaha’s work and Saudi Arabia does not occupy a high ranking in those metrics. International comparisons are important because they are taken into consideration by investors and potential talents considering relocating.
It would therefore be useful for Nazaha to partner with successful counterparts in top-ranked countries, which in most indexes include the Scandinavian nations, New Zealand, Switzerland, Singapore, the Netherlands and Germany, to learn not only from their methodologies but also on how they project and publicize their work.
The UN Development Programme and other international agencies have put together robust methodologies, based on best practices, to effectively fight corruption. While those studies and manuals are useful, learning from the experience of high performers is essential.
By fighting corruption in this manner, the
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