Oman: Three jailed in graft case

An Oman court has sentenced three men – a government official and two senior businessmen – to jail on corruption charges. The government official was also banned from public office for 20 years, following a trial which has exposed the payment of bribes to Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), which is majority government-owned. On 12 January, the Court of First Instance in Muscat sentenced Juma Al-Hinai, an official in the finance ministry who was also the head of the PDO tenders committee, to three years in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of OR600,000 ($1.6m).