Bahrain Mirror - Exclusive: The president of "Ibda'a Bank" Khalid Al-Ghazawi is an example of all that is dark in Bahrain. This criminal fraud, who was revealed to have forged academic credentials through paying $13 thousand to buy his PhD from a fake university "Ray", went on to threaten those who exposed him with legal prosecution, instead of stepping back before this huge scandal. He not only talks about the possibility to exploit the penal system in his country Jordan, but also notes it in Bahrain.

"When I go back to the beloved Kingdom, I will take necessary measures with the cyber-crime department and the just Bahraini judiciary against all who harmed me, to demand material and moral compensation". This is how he baldly threatened those who criticized him with shame and fear. With all this arrogance, he turned the issue of his forged credentials into a story of abuse, not only to him, but rather to his country Jordan. Like him, members of his family bragged as rude as he did, that the lawsuits are on their way to the Bahraini and Jordanian Public Prosecutions.

It has been 4 years since Al-Ghazawi first came to Bahrain for work in 2014. This is enough time for him to really understand the power relations, and how to play them. As a foreigner brought in by a "Sheikh" from the ruling family, he has learned the system of privileges by heart; the dominants and the dominated. Those like him, whatever was the mistake they committed, have some who would constantly manage their affairs and work things out for them. He was trained to use the map of power distribution in a sick exhausted country, to escape the status of a criminal and smoothly move to the status of demanding compensation.

It is not a slip of the tongue to indicate that "who appointed me in the bank was Sheikh Fadel of the ruling family Sheikhs", neither is hinting that his dad and the Bahrain King were colleagues in the Air Force. He knows the power of what he's saying, as he knows what he's doing when he pleads the Foreign Minister on his page addressing him as "Master", as if there is a reassurance saying: Don't worry, whoever got you in it will get you out of it. As they said in the local Bahraini rhetoric, "A Sheikh's Dog is a Sheikh". In this ordeal, he wishes to be "The Sheikh's Dog", and if necessary, his low-life patronized puppy. He speaks with high confidence; extreme confidence, including bragging about cutting off 20 Bahraini bankers from their jobs and hiring "honest" naturalized Jordanians in their place. No one would utter with such confidence, only he who is certain that someone would tackle this crime, and bury it.

The Bahraini Ministry of Education has a difficult task. It left this file to grow and be exaggerated, until it reached a position it's near explosion. It has a proactive forged PhD, a bank manager armored with a fake qualification, and dependent on the Sheikhs and their sons to support his stance. He is a forger who paved for himself, and to others of fake PhD holders, the way to avoiding accountability through saying "professional doctorate" and not an academic one. Here goes the regular train of excuses and eloquence of Arabs who have always seen the Arabian Gulf in an abhorrent image, describing it a marginal line that could be manipulated; an easy margin that could be deceived. If no one shut the door of excuses immediately in the face of this fraud, then nothing will.

Hundreds of certificates' and academic credentials' forgers like Khalid Al-Ghazawi are waiting for their green light to go.

Arabic Version