Sixteen Taif municipality officials convicted of corruption have had their wait for the court to provide them with official detailed verdicts, without which they cannot proceed with appeals, extended for a fourth time due to the vacation plans of a judge. Fears that the 30-day period within which appeals must be made had come to an end have been allayed, however, with judicial sources clarifying that the deadline is calculated from the date the verdict documents are passed to the sentenced individuals, and not from the date of verdict announcements. Previous postponements had been attributed by legal sources to “administrative” reasons concerning the “size of the case and the number of persons involved”, and the new delay brings the wait to nearly two months after the case itself took four years and 20 sessions at Jeddah's Administrative Court to reach a conclusion. The 16 were handed sentences in July ranging from prison, dismissal from employment, and fines for accepting bribes totaling SR1.4 million from private businessmen for the award of government grants, wasting public money, appropriating government funds for personal gain, falsification of data, and illegally supplying electricity to homes. Seven others implicated in the case were absolved of all charges, while two private businessmen were fined SR150,000 each.
