Kuwait court cancels firm’s licence in residence permit scam

If you’ve ever paid a fee to renew your residence permit, or waited at a company’s accounts office for your visa transfer paperwork, you’ve trusted that the whole system runs on real jobs and real documents. A new court case shows how easily that trust can be broken by people selling permits that were never meant to be sold.

Kuwait’s Criminal Court, First Circuit, has sentenced two Egyptian nationals to five years in prison each, and a Bangladeshi sanitation worker to four years, over a case built around residence permit trading, forged paperwork and bribery. This comes only weeks after the court jailed two Egyptians over a web scam, part of a wider pattern of financial crime cases moving through Kuwait’s courts this year.

What exactly did the court find?

The Residence Affairs Investigation Department looked into violations linked to a company accused of illegally trading residence permits, meaning selling permits as a way to make money rather than offering real jobs. Investigators also found forged official transactions tied to the same network.

The first Egyptian defendant was found guilty over two workers’ cases. The court gave him 5 years in prison with hard labour, enforced immediately, plus a fine of KD 10,000.

The second Egyptian defendant was sentenced to the same 5 years in prison with hard labour, enforced immediately. His fine was much smaller, KD 50, and it was linked to bribery connected to forging a residence permit renewal transaction.

The Bangladeshi defendant, who worked as a sanitation worker, received 4 years in prison with hard labour, enforced immediately, along with a KD 50 fine for bribery.

What happened to the company?

The court did not stop at the three individuals. It also ruled against the goods transportation company at the centre of the case.

Judges ordered the company to pay KD 10,000 for each of the two workers named in the case, bringing its total fine to KD 20,000. On top of that, the court ordered the company’s licence to be cancelled completely, meaning it can no longer operate under that registration.

This part of the ruling matters because it shows Kuwaiti courts are not only punishing individuals caught in visa trading schemes. They are also going after the companies that let these schemes exist in the first place, by using their licences as a cover to bring in workers who then get sold fake or unnecessary permits.

Why visa trading cases keep coming up

Residence permit trading happens when a company registers workers on paper, sometimes for jobs that don’t really exist, and then charges them money for the visa itself. It’s different from normal recruitment, where a worker is hired for an actual role and sponsored properly.

Kuwait’s courts have handed down several rulings this year connected to fraud, forged documents and financial crime involving expat communities. Earlier cases include a ruling where the court jailed eight expats over money laundering, and a separate case where a bank worker got 10 years for stealing loan fees. You can find more of this site’s local court and legal news if you want to follow how these cases unfold.

For genuine workers, these schemes can mean paying money upfront for a permit that was never really tied to a real job, leaving them stuck once authorities uncover the fraud. For honest companies competing for the same labour quotas, it also means unfair competition from firms using fake hiring on paper.

What this means for people in Kuwait

For expat workers, this case is a reminder to be careful about any arrangement where someone offers a residence permit in exchange for payment, outside of normal, documented employment. If a job offer feels like it’s really about buying a visa rather than doing real work, that’s a warning sign.

For companies, especially smaller firms in sectors like transport and sanitation that rely on large numbers of work permits, the cancelled licence here shows regulators are willing to shut a business down entirely, not just fine it.

For citizens and long-term residents generally, cases like this affect the wider residency system everyone depends on, since permit trading pushes up the number of workers in Kuwait who aren’t tied to real jobs, which authorities have flagged as a concern in past labour market discussions.

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