The Minister of Finance, Mohammed Yusr Barnieh, announced the arrest of 22 workers from the directorates of finance in Damascus and Damascus countryside, 9 employees of the Real Estate Bank, in addition to 5 employees of the Official Gazette, and all of them were duly referred to investigation.

In a post on his Facebook page, the minister said that these decisions come within a continuous path to enhance integrity in government financial services, and to control performance in directorates and institutions linked to the Ministry of Finance, stressing that the ministry is continuing to eradicate corruption without any leniency.

Barnia stressed the keenness to fight corruption and consolidate the values of integrity, matched by greater keenness to achieve fairness and justice, in order to ensure that no employee is wronged and that the procedures remain within their legal and institutional framework.

Previous Decisions

During the past two months, the Minister of Finance issued a series of decisions described as the widest in years as part of an extensive campaign to combat corruption within the financial and administrative sector, where 94 employees in the directorates of finance in the governorates of Damascus, Rural Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Tartous and Daraa were arrested, and all of them were referred to investigation last May.

During the same period, administrative and behavioral sanctions were issued against 256 employees, in addition to referring 25 newly resigned employees to the Graft Committee to investigate the sources of their wealth, in addition to the arrest of 29 employees in the Damascus Finance and its countryside, and 10 employees of the Real Estate Bank in Damascus.

The Minister opened the campaign in April 2026 by issuing a preliminary decision to hand over the hands of 27 employees in the Directorate of Finance in Damascus and its countryside, and refer them to the administrative and moral judiciary, in conjunction with a parallel move represented in the cancellation of the licenses of a large number of transaction trackers and brokers involved in corruption networks within the directorates, in an attempt to cut off the informal extensions that feed violations within financial institutions.

"Palm of the Hand" in Syrian Law

The restraint measure is regulated in Syrian law under the provisions of the Basic Law of State Personnel No. 50 of 2004 and is a temporary precautionary measure taken to protect the conduct of the investigation rather than a final punishment.

This procedure is based on preventing the worker from exercising his or her job duties for a specific period of time, in order to ensure that he is removed from the workplace to prevent any possible impact on evidence or witnesses, and the decision is usually issued by the competent minister or the competent judicial authority.

Restraint is resorted to when there are positive reasons, most notably the existence of suspicion of corruption or preliminary evidence of the waste of public funds or the receipt of bribes, or when a serious behavioral violation is committed that harms the interest of the work, in addition to cases in which the worker is referred to the judiciary, whether criminal or penal, which requires the suspension of his duties until the end of the legal procedures.

During the period of hand-holding, the worker receives only 50% of his basic wage, while all compensation and allowances associated with the actual job are frozen until the outcome of the investigation is released.

The worker shall be immediately reinstated to work if proven innocent, with the remaining half of the withheld wages paid. However, if the investigation proves that the violation or crime has been committed, he shall be permanently dismissed and deprived of the remaining wages, in addition to the imposition of behavioral or penal penalties against him according to the nature of the violation.