Kuwait: Kuwait's Interior Ministry announced on Thursday that it has busted three criminal networks operating illegally to issue fake work permits and visas and in running an illegal parallel 'hawala' money transfer and arrested over 20 people in the process. The ministry said in statements on its X platform that security men busted “a criminal network” involved in forging transactions for work permits in favor of private companies against money. Six Egyptians, a Syrian and a Kuwaiti were arrested.

Security men arrested a senior official at the Public Authority of Manpower supplied a member of the network with transactions he used to issue work permits to recruit Egyptians valued at between KD 130 to KD 250, the ministry said. The defendants confessed to providing forged work permits to several companies which managed to illegally recruit manpower from Egypt, it said.

In the second bust, residency department security men dismantled a network which used licenses of 28 private companies to illegally recruit 382 workers from outside for between KD 800 and KD 1,000 each in addition to paying officials from the manpower authority amounts of KD 200-250 for each worker, the ministry said. Police arrested three Kuwaiti officials at the manpower authority, two Egyptians and a Palestinian with an Egyptian travel document, it said.

The ministry also said that officials of the department for combating terrorism and money laundering arrested two Kuwaitis and six Egyptians for operating a network involved in the illegal transfer of money through the so-called “alternative Hawala”.

Hawala is the unofficial method of transferring money to foreign countries outside the banking system, through money changers, while the illegal form of hawala money is transferred completely outside the official system to avoid supervision.