In an effort to disseminate legal awareness and initiate simplifying courts' procedures in addition to educating individuals of their legal rights, Abdul Qadir AlBakri & Sons Holding Company signed a cooperation agreement to financially support "Qadaa" as part of its social responsibility programs. A.Q. AlBakri & Sons Holding will support Qadaa in dealing with social issues related to awareness or research and seminars in order to raise society's legal awareness or to simplify processes or to identify the rights of both citizens and residents before the courts. Abdul Qadir AlBakri, chairman of A.Q. AlBakri & Sons Holding, said the agreement aims to facilitate the Qadaa research activities and its other numerous projects as everyone is keen and in need of being aware of their duties and commitments that coexist with religion in the sense of conformity or in pleading before the law or in a hearing. "These activities and projects urge us to give our support to such organizations, for we have found that "Qadaa organization plays a major role in raising such legal awareness." AlBakri further said the ministry of justice supports and encourages such scientific organizations, especially legal ones and considers them an important source for judges in research and study areas and in scientific findings. The Ministry of Justice is also keen to collaborate with such organizations to help improve the legal system, he said, "which encourages us to enter into such an agreement which will help Qadaa achieve many of its goals in serving the Shariah law." These agreements are part of a series of agreements that have been signed by A.Q. AlBakri & Sons Holding Co. with several organizations such as AlBir Society, Ibn Sina Medical College Hospital and Qadha org. to enable and aid them to fulfill their roles in serving the community, be it socially or financially or by offering products and services that benefit the society. Sheikh Hamad AlRazeen, judge at the Ministry of Justice and vice president of Qadaa, announced that in the beginning, five ministries and specialty parties will implement a new mechanism to protect the rights and properties of endowments and that will give the guardians extra monetary privileges so that the main endowment entity would be under the courts purview and its guardian would be given legal access and responsibility of all its aspects of investments. Moreover, Sheikh Hamad clarifies after signing the agreement with Sheikh Abdul Qadir AlBakri, that the new mechanism is in the process of being coordinated between the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, Islamic Affairs, The Financial and The High Supreme Court and related parties to pave the way to reaching a final understanding regarding endowments and enabling their guardians to manage the endowments on their own without the need for the justice system to intervene. However, some cases may have to be presented to higher authorities. According to the announced figures, Sheikh Hamad said endowments are worth more than SR1 trillion in the kingdom which are funds that need investing and developing and monitoring power assigned to them. He said Saudi courts are crammed with cases related to endowments throughout the years caused by family strife and heirs' disagreements and quarrels. He claimed that there are billions of frozen assets in the state treasury and in banks related to quarrels and disagreements on endowments. One such case is of an endowment worth SR3 billion presented to the court in Riyadh. Another example of such cases is the case of billions left by a diseased Jeddah businessman 18 years ago which remains open till this day. "Qadaa's aim is to raise personal rights awareness at a time where the society's legal knowledge is at its weakest," Sheikh Hamad stressed, adding "how is it possible for a university professor or an engineer not to be able to write-up or sign a contract with enough awareness that will ensure his rights and benefit his business."
