Mubasher: Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS) has unveiled a development regarding loans it had given to ailing Abraaj Group.

The PIFSS said that its former director general Fahad Al Rajaan had given the UAE-based investment firm loans without a case study but by direct approval, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Qabas reported.

The Kuwaiti social security body said it did not have any feasibility studies regarding giving loans to Abraaj, it said.

Less than 50% of the loans provided to the roiling company in 2013 have been returned.

The PIFSS has given The Abraaj Group around $731.8 million in loans, of which only $346.1 million have been restored, with $385 million remaining, the newspaper added, citing the Kuwaiti social security body as saying.

The PIFSS had launched a risk management department to examine providing loans to companies in 2010, however, the department was not effective until 2013 after the loans were given to Abraaj, the Kuwaiti body revealed.

It is worth noting that the former PIFSS top official is currently wanted in Kuwait on embezzlement charges after criminal complaints were brought against him that he had misused money during this tenor at the PIFSS. His assets, along with those of wife and children, have been frozen. An arrest warrant was issued in his name in mid-November 2015, only two years after the Abraaj loans.

According to Kuwait Times, an “international detention warrant has been issued against the fugitive Al-Rajaan and has ordered his imprisonment in absentia.”