AMMAN — The Lower House on Wednesday tasked its Permanent Bureau with forming a five-member committee to investigate illegalities in a previous government’s decision to allow convicted business tycoon Khalid Shahin to travel abroad for treatment.

The move was made at the beginning of yesterday’s session, in which deputies continued their discussion of the privatisation of the formerly state-owned phosphate, potash, cement and telecommunication companies, again questioning the integrity of the privatisation policy.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh referred the Shahin case to the Chamber of Deputies.

In previous remarks to The Jordan Times, Minister of State for Legal Affairs Ibrahim Jazi said the file details the findings of an investigation carried out by the Anti-Corruption Commission into the case, in which former interior and health ministers Saad Hayel Srour and Yassin Husban were found responsible for allowing Shahin to leave the country for treatment abroad while incarcerated on corruption charges.

Shahin, who was serving a three-year term in prison for bribery and corruption in a case related to the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company expansion project, was allowed to leave the country in February on the basis of a joint medical report signed by doctors from the private and public sectors stating that his obesity-related health condition could not be treated in Jordan.