He had been accused of embezzlement on a grand scale while head of the Slovak gas authority, which has close links to Russia.
The handoff would have happened sooner if not for the embezzlement of $400,000 a couple of years ago by a longtime employee who was like family and who, it turned out, liked to gamble.
The committee also found that Mr. Wahid had most likely played a role in his masseur's embezzlement of $3.7 million from a government agency.
The ruling wiped out all the misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest charges, leaving only embezzlement of public funds — a charge with no filing limit, but also a harder one to prove.
The first case involves the embezzlement of $3.7 million from a government agency by Mr. Wahid's personal masseur.
PATTERSON-UTI ENERGY, an onshore oil and natural gas driller, said that federal regulators were investigating whether securities laws were violated in the embezzlement of $77.8 million by a former chief financial officer.
In a closed-door session, the 50-member committee presented the findings of its six-month inquiry into accusations that Mr. Wahid may have been involved in the embezzlement of $3.7 million from a government agency and that he improperly accepted $2 million from the sultan of Brunei.
The popular and charismatic anti-corruption crusader himself narrowly escaped a five-year prison term following his conviction in July for embezzlement of $500,000 from an obscure provincial timber company.
"Some 20 doctors and public health managers were the object of arrest warrants and therefore jailed following an investigation into embezzlement of GAVI funds," said a judge in Niamey, who asked not to be named.
Mr. Pasqua, 83, received a one-year suspended prison sentence for embezzlement of public funds in a case linked to the sale of police equipment abroad; he was acquitted on corruption charges in two other cases.
