It seems efforts are underway to fight corruption in Jordan.

The Amman prosecutor general recently indicted 350 people on charges of corruption, a senior interior ministry official said on Monday. "Abuse of public and private posts has wrought havoc on our economy and development," said the official, preferring anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. "We need to send a message that Jordan is a safe country for foreign investors. We can only do that by cracking down on corruption."

The official went on to point out that, of the 350 indictments, at least 300 were handed out to members of the private sector. While he was unwilling to disclose the precise amounts of money involved in the cases, he conceded that some involved amounts in the millions of dollars. "Some cases involve hundreds or thousand of dollars, but others are in the tens of millions," he said. Source: [IRIN]

However, some remain skeptical.

"We have thousands of high-profile corruption cases, but they’re covered up by the government and influential personalities," said MP Abdul Rahim Malhas, who accused successive governments of "lacking serious motivation" for fighting corruption. "The past four governments used all kinds of rhetoric to announce their ‘wars on corruption’, but we later discovered that top officials from the same governments were themselves corrupt."

I guess one reason behind such cynicism is Jordan’s ranking in the official statistics:

In a 2005 report by corruption watchdog Transparency International, Jordan ranked 37th out of 145 countries in the world in terms of official corruption levels. The report ranked Jordan fourth in the Arab world, after Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

I think it’s best to take a "wait-and-see" attitude. Maybe Jordan’s shameful rating will improve after this new anti-corruption drive.