Former governor of Yemen's Shabwa seized funds allocated to 251 development and service projects: Revealed

Documents showed the involvement of the former governor of Yemen's Shabwa, Mohammed Saleh bin Adyo, in a major corruption case related to the waste of millions of dollars allocated to 251 development and service projects in the governorate during his tenure in office between November 2018 and December 2021.

The documents revealed the appropriation of allocations for approved projects as well as fake projects or the spending of billions of riyals in illegal aspects, as well as projects whose cost was fully approved and did not find their way to implementation.

Those projects, financed by the state’s general budget, presidential support, the transfer of oil derivatives, and Shabwa’s share of 20% of oil revenues were distributed to maintain the sectors of water, works, roads, higher education, technical, health, education, electricity, agriculture, irrigation, youth, sports, tourism, taxes, justice, endowments, air transport, culture, surveying, local administration, social affairs, media, security, fisheries, communications, defense, finance, planning, specifications and standards, industry, commerce, and statistics.

Many companies, institutions, and contractors affiliated with the Islah Party were implicated in the corruption of projects in Shabwa governorate, which were disbursing projects to them without tenders or standards by Bin Adyo.

Shabwa is the third largest governorate in Yemen in terms of area, and it is surrounded by four governorates, bordered by Hadramawt to the east, Ma'rib to the north, Abyan and Al Bayda to the west.

Since the beginning of the Houthi coup in Yemen in late 2014, Shabwa has become a destination for tens of thousands of internally displaced people looking for a safe place to live and work, after fleeing Houthi-controlled areas in the Yemeni governorates west of Shabwa.