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Ammon News - An anti-corruption judicial panel at the Amman Court of First Instance on Thursday sentenced 6 persons, including a current secretary-general of a ministry and a former one, to 6 months in prison each and a fine of approximately JD250,000 after finding them guilty of breach of duty.

The court ruling also includes three officials in a ministry and the head of an engineering department in a government oversight body. In the guilty verdict, the court said that the six gave the green light to purchase two rigs for a ministry from a Turkish company without the machinery being in compliance with the required terms and specifications.

The six, who were members of a procurement committee, had awarded the bid to supply the two rigs without complying with the technical specifications, although there were 13 compatible offers, and they had not inspected the machinery in the country of origin before purchasing as required by law, the court explained.

The court also clarified that the convicts paid, from the state treasury, the price of the two rigs in full as soon as they arrived at the port of Aqaba and did not link the payments, as required, until ensuring that they conformed to the specifications.

After it was later found that the two rigs lacked some equipment, the six removed equipment from the machinery of a government entity, to which the new machinery were supposed to go, and installed them on the two rigs, the court added.

In the end, the investigators discovered that the two rigs were used and were not as new as required, and the price of the two rigs, according to what the committee had falsely claimed, was JD1.55 million.