Mar.24, 2010

A Bahraini minister is under investigation after being charged with laundering money from criminal enterprises, judicial officials said Wednesday.

The former minister has been released on bail while investigations are underway, officials said, but prosecutors have imposed a travel ban on him and frozen his assets.

On Tuesday, Bahrain's prosecutor general charged Mansour bin Rajab, a former minister of state without portfolio, for laundering money from "criminal activities."

A day earlier, the island kingdom's ruler fired him, one of the first times a minister has ever been fired for corruption in a Gulf country.

Prosecutor Ali bin Fadhel al-Boeinyan said the charges include receiving kickbacks from trafficking in weapons and narcotics, adding that the money laundering network involved a Kuwaiti woman and several unidentified Arabs.

Bin Rajab, who had previously worked as a minister of agriculture and local municipalities, is reported to have received more than $30 million through his various deals.

Newspapers in the Gulf have suggested that the money laundering network is connected to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which is widely accused of running a huge weapons smuggling business in the Gulf.

Bin Rajab described the accusations as "unfounded."

He is a prominent member of Bahrain's majority Shiite community and the charge has raised fears of a sectarian backlash over accusations of bias against the Sunni ruling elite.

The pro-U.S. island kingdom, which hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet, is majority Shiite and there have been frequent demonstrations by disaffected members of the community.

The investigations comes in the course of a parliamentary inquiry into allegations that government officials embezzled billions of dollars from sales of state-owned land.