Police struggling to identify the people who submitted fraudulent party membership forms

Police have said that they are finding it difficult to identify the perpetrators in a recent case where a number of political party membership forms were discovered to be unauthentic.

Police said that one of their main handicaps in finding enough evidence for prosecution is the manner in which the forms are processed by the Elections Commission (EC).

Speaking at a press conference in Iskandar Building today, Head of Fraud and Financial Crime Chief Inspector Abdulla Shatheeh said that some of the forms at the EC did not have fingerprint stamps and that even if they did, the police fingerprint database is not extensive enough to identify all of them.

The EC mandatory criterion for all membership forms to have fingerprint stamps was disregarded temporarily following an order by the Parliament Committee on Independent Institutions. It came into effect again after the recent law on political parties came into effect.

Speaking on the issue today, Chief Inspector Shatheeh said the majority of people under whose names the membership forms were submitted had denied filling out the forms, and that the people who had signed as witnesses have also denied giving their signatures. He said that they have collected handwriting samples and fingerprints from the people they have questioned.

“In reality, when we think about the registration process for the political party members, the registration application process and the form evaluation process, we’re finding it difficult to find enough evidence to accuse and prosecute someone… It is very difficult to determine whether the person who signed as the witness is he himself or someone else, it is difficult to identify. Often there are no fingerprints,” Shatheeh said.

Police are looking into a total of 47 membership forms of which, 46 were submitted to the police by the EC. The remaining form was submitted by a private individual.

Police said that so far, they have been able to solve only one case regarding the issue.

They said that three similar cases were investigated in 2011 and that only a single individual was prosecuted.