Saudi Arabia on Saturday arrested two former officials of its Saudi Embassy in Bangladesh for taking bribes equivalent to Tk 154 crore for issuing work visas to Bangladeshis.
The arrestees are Abdullah Falah Mudhahi Al-Shammari, former head of the consular section and deputy ambassador at the embassy, and Khaled Nasser Ayed Al-Qahtani, deputy head of the consular section, reports Saudi Newspaper Al-Marsd.
Both of them admitted that they sent a part of the bribe money to Saudi Arabia and invested the rest outside the Kingdom.
Two of them were arrested in Saudi Arabia.
The findings by the Saudi anti-graft body were corroborated by some international recruiting agents of Bangladesh who did not want to be named fearing reprisals.
According to them, about a year back, the Saudi Embassy in Dhaka started charging recruiting agencies $220 to $250 for every work visa, violating rules.
"The embassy suddenly set a rule that one recruiting agency would not be allowed to submit more than 20 visa applications a week. An agency would submit applications once a week," a recruiting agent said.
However, many agencies had several hundred passports to deal with. As they were desperate to have the work visas issued within a certain period, the embassy staff started charging money.
