Manama: Kuwait is revoking the nationality of 20 naturalised Kuwaitis after investigations concluded they cheated on their citizenship applications.
Sources told Kuwaiti daily Al Rai that the 19 men and one woman were referred to justice while the interior ministry was working on revoking the nationality.
Under the Kuwaiti citizenship law, the nationality is revoked if the applicant provided false information or fake certificates.
The revocation is ordered by the cabinet based on a request from the interior minister.
The source said that the men and woman were related and that the investigations focused on their dates of birth which proved the cheating on the applications and led to referring the case to the interior ministry.
Kuwaiti security authorities have recently boosted their efforts to tackle cases of forged citizenships that involved Kuwaitis who abused the system to obtain the Kuwaiti nationality for non-Kuwaitis and allow them to benefit from its social and economic advantages.
Unmasked
Efforts in 2015 led to the unmasking of 105 people who took up the Kuwaiti citizenship illegally.
According to Al Rai, the number of people arrested in the first seven months of 2016 for obtaining the Kuwaiti citizenship fraudulently was 106.
In June, a police officer of Syrian origin was stripped of the Kuwaiti nationality after the authorities discovered that his application documents were forged.
The officer reportedly admitted he was well aware of the scam.
Two Syrian brothers were also arrested in June and admitted that they acquired the Kuwaiti citizenship in 1970 through separate agreements with a Kuwaiti man who forged documents to add them as members of his family.
