KUWAIT CITY, Dec 5: In a case that stunned investigators and exposed a web of betrayal inside two family files, Kuwait’s General Department of Nationality Investigations has dismantled a years-long scheme in which two Syrians were wrongfully granted Kuwaiti citizenship — one of them the brother of a Syrian woman married to the citizen at the center of the scandal.

According to informed sources, the plot began when a Kuwaiti man, newly married to a Syrian woman, agreed to her request to register her brother as his “son” from a previous marriage. The registration slipped through undetected, with the man listed under the name of the citizen’s second wife. But the deception did not end there. A second Syrian man — identified as “Allan” — was later added to the same file, also presented as a biological son of the Kuwaiti citizen.

What followed was a labyrinth of forged family ties, false parentage, and tangled paperwork so elaborate that investigators described the case as one of the most complex they have encountered in recent years.

When the file was reopened, authorities ordered a full DNA sweep of the Kuwaiti citizen’s 14 registered children. The results struck with the force of a revelation: only 12 were genuine. Two — the Syrian brother and Allan — had no genetic connection to the citizen. Both men had been fraudulently inserted into the family tree.

The plot deepened further when one of the impostors fled Kuwait. His children were summoned for DNA testing, which revealed a shocking link: the Kuwaiti citizen’s Syrian wife — the architect of the scheme — was in fact their aunt.

The ramifications of the fraud stretched far beyond the two men themselves. Each had built an extended network of dependents on their files. The wife’s brother had 26 dependents, while Allan had 18, pushing the total number of people tied to the deception to 44 — not including the citizen or his legitimate children.

Investigators say the case laid bare how a single act of manipulation spiraled into a multigenerational fraud, infiltrating Kuwait’s nationality records and granting citizenship to individuals with no legal entitlement.

After completing its review, the Supreme Committee for Citizenship Investigation moved decisively. Citizenship was formally withdrawn from both Syrian men and from all 44 dependents linked to them. The Kuwaiti citizen’s own file is now undergoing full legal processing, with further consequences expected.

What began as a husband’s trust became a deception of staggering scale — undone only by the irrefutable truth of DNA.