ACCORDING to a recent report in Al-Riyadh newspaper, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (Nazaha) has discovered numerous violations and cases of corruption after reviewing the contracts of 400 government projects. The investigations proved that there were corruption, negligence and tampering in the contracts of 306 of these projects. Of these cases, 30 were referred to the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution (BIP). The rest were referred to the other concerned bodies. This report raises a number of questions. Why do we still have corruption although we have many bodies to fight it? In addition to the BIP we also have the General Auditing Bureau and the Control and Investigation Bureau. What is the role of these bodies in the corruption cases uncovered by Nazaha? What exactly are the duties of these bodies? Does this fact not drive us to review the reasons for which these bodies were established? What is their usefulness? Is it not better to cancel them altogether or add them to Nazaha? According to the report, Nazaha has detected corruption in 306 contracts and referred only 30 of them to the BIP. Does this mean that the rest of the discovered cases wre not worthy of investigation? Why were they named corruption cases in the first place? Another question is: why did Nazaha refer these cases to the BIP, which is already overloaded? Why does Nazaha itself not deal with these cases instead of distributing them here and there? Finally, why have we so far not read or heard that the corrupt people discovered by Nazaha were investigated or punished?
