Three Ashghal employees have been sentenced to serve two years in prison after a court found them guilty of bribery, The Peninsula reports.
The case involves an engineer, two managers from the Public Works Authority, as well as another official from a contracting company, said the paper, quoting Al Sharq.
The bribery case is reported to have come to light during the implementation of Doha Expressway project.
A report from the Public Prosecution and the State Audit Bureau was submitted to the court with the statements of witnesses.
The report blamed the manager of the Doha Expressway project at Ashghal for helping two contracting companies to get the tender for the Doha Expressway project worth QR220mn ($60.4mn) in return for bribes.
Based on this information, the companies priced their bids and won the contract, reports say.
The manager was also convicted of extending the deadline for the completion of the project to prevent the companies from being fined.
The second convict, a manager of a company, admitted that the first convict had demanded cash and services of the companies to renovate his house as a bribe.
The third convict, manager of the second company, said that his company had sent the first convict on a foreign trip and paid the expenditure and also gave some gifts.
The fourth convict was involved in seeking tender details illegally from the first convict, Al Sharq said.
A lower criminal court sentenced the foursome to 10 years in jail for their involvement in a bribery scandal, but a higher court, during the hearing of an appeal, reduced the prison sentence to two years.
The Upper Criminal Court has upheld the remaining portion of the verdict of the lower court, with all of the employees dismissed from their roles and the project manager – the main offender according to the report – receiving a fine of QR 500,000 ($137,300), the news report added.
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