Asian in the dock for embezzlement

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

An Asian, 23, was referred by the Dubai Public Prosecution to Dubai Criminal Court for embezzling Dhs97,000 from the company he worked for. The court heard the case on Sunday.

The incident took place at Dubai International Airport, where the defendant worked for a tax refund company for passengers. The defendant forged unofficial electronic documents to change the method of refunding the passengers’ VAT and deposit the same in the accounts of credit cards that belonged to his friends outside the UAE.

The company official testified that he was a member of the work team that reviewed all the tax refund data processed by the defendant. He found that credit cards of 9 passengers of different nationalities were repeatedly used, he said, adding that the passengers applied for cash refund of their VAT but could not receive the amounts for fear that they might miss their flights.

The official explained that the defendant changed the passengers’ tax refund claims from cash system to credit card refund system. The defendant used to wait till the end of the 90-day recovery period to transfer the amount outside the UAE, the official said, adding that this was discovered when a passenger complained that he had not received the VAT through his credit card.  Checking who concluded the passenger’s transaction, the official discovered that it was the defendant who mistakenly inputted one of the nine credit cards he had instead of the complainant’s credit card.

During  interrogations, the defendant confessed to have embezzled the VAT entitled to the passengers who claimed refund on their VAT at Dubai International Airport by transferring the refund amount to credit cards the belonged to people he knew outside the UAE. The court ordered the defendant to be remanded in custody.

In another development, an Asian, 24, brought 50 plastic capsules containing half a kilo of methamphetamine for circulation in the country. He was referred by the Dubai Public Prosecution to Dubai Criminal Court, which heard his case on Sunday.

The incident took place at Dubai International Airport, where the customs inspector testified that because he had suspected the defendant, he searched him using the passenger screening equipment, which showed that strange objects were in his guts. Faced with the evidence, the defendant asked to go to the water closet where he emptied his guts: a number of capsules inside transparent plastic rolls. The defendant told the inspector he had swallowed the rolls in his home country for delivery to people inside the UAE.