Bahrain Mirror: The Bahraini High Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal of three defendants accused of laundering money obtained from crimes, while each defendant was fined 500 dinars for collecting funds without a license and sending them to a private institution in Tanzania, which was arranged by the third defendant residing in Iran.

The authorities say that they received a report from the Financial Investigation Department, which included that the first defendant was caught collecting funds without authorization and sending them outside Bahrain, as his name and telephone number appeared in an account on Instagram, indicating that he was collecting donations on behalf of a Tanzanian institution. The defendant confessed during interrogation that he is an employee in a company that collects money and sends it via exchange companies to Tanzania.

He added that he was doing this after the third defendant persuaded him to make the transfers to an institution called Sadiq al-Amin in Tanzania. He said he was raising money from people who wanted to donate towards building mosques, digging wells, fostering orphans and other purposes, adding that he coordinated with the third defendant via the Whatsapp, noting that first operation was in 2015 when the third defendant asked him to receive a sum of 70,000 Saudi riyals from a person. The defendant explained that he sent part of the amount in two stages and handed others the rest so that they would send it without him getting exposed.

The accounts of the second defendant, who worked in exchange, revealed that he had conducted 17 transfers between 2014 and 2017 to Tanzania with a total of 13,941 dinars, which was limited to two persons. He admitted in the interrogation that he was studying in Syria where he met the third defendant, who left it for Iran in 2011 and who had convinced him to commit the act.

Arabic Version