(MENAFN- Jordan Times) A former General Intelligence Department (GID) officer testified in court Monday that his former boss, Mohammad Dahabi, had lied about money confiscated from Iraqis at the border, but said the funds were returned to their owners.
Dahabi, who served as GID director from 2005 to 2008, is on trial for embezzlement, money laundering and exploitation of public office during his term.
Retired Brig. Gen. Ali Burjaq told the Amman Criminal Court that the president of the Jordanian Exchange Association, Alaa Eddine Diraniyeh, had contacted him and complained that the GID had seized $28 million from Iraqis at the Karameh border crossing, where a retired officer of Burjaq's rank was appointed by the defendant.
The officer in question, Hussein Habashneh, told Burjaq there was no documentation of the confiscated money, according to the testimony.
Habashneh testified on Sunday that he had informed Dahabi's office about the confiscated money and received directives to send it there.
When he asked Dahabi about the issue, Burjaq told the court, the director said that the sum was only $8 million. But when Burjaq oversaw the counting of the money, it turned out to include $24 million in US currency and the equivalent of $4 million in other currencies.
The sum was $300,000 short of the missing amount, Burjaq confirmed, recalling that Dahabi's office director Arafat Abzakh had told him that Dahabi had distributed rewards to the officers at the Karameh border crossing for their efforts in seizing the money. The rest was returned to its original owners through State Security Prosecutor Fawaz Otoum.
During Tuesday's hearing, six other witnesses testified before the Criminal Court, among them former interior minister Eid Fayez, former Amman mayor Nidal Hadid, and Housing Bank for Trade and Finance CEO Omar Malhas. Real estate broker Zahir Swais, Mohammed Mirza Kurdi, a Jordanian of Iraqi origin, and Khalid Sakkijha, an acquaintance of the defendant, also testified.
Most significant was Fayez's testimony. He told the court that he had handed JD250,000 in cash to Abzakh after he was told that Dahabi had requested the money to pay the GID's expenses during the 2007 parliamentary elections.
"I gave Abzakh the money at my office after I took it out of the safe," Fayez said, stressing that he did not know what happened to the money after Abzakh took it or whether it reached Dahabi.
Dahabi filed a lawsuit against Abzakh on Sunday, accusing him of responsibility for the disappearance of the funds. The case is now being investigated, but the defence team claimed that Fayez's testimony supported their client's story.
Meanwhile, Hadid said that he had turned down a request to facilitate a "suspicious" transaction after a man told him that Dahabi had sent him for that purpose, adding that Marcel Yacoubian, a Lebanese architect who was a close friend of Dahabi and who is involved in a corruption case attributed to the former GID director, had also pressured him to complete the transaction.
Malhas provided the court with a brief on Dahabi's financial activities, explaining to the judges that these documents proved that Dahabi had bought more than $5.6 million worth of stocks and bonds in international investment funds.
The trial was adjourned until Thursday, when the court is scheduled to hear the rest of the prosecution witnesses' testimonies.
Mahmoud Kilani, one of Dahabi's attorneys, said they would file a new bail petition after the prosecution presents the rest of its witnesses.
Dahabi has so far been denied bail 15 times.
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