Asian gets 3 years’ jail for embezzling Dhs4.5m

Ehab Atta, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced an Asian employee working in an electricity and water government authority to 3 years in jail and fined him Dhs4.5 million to be followed by deportation after being convicted of embezzling Dhs4.5 million from a company through 2,146 fake transactions, in which customers presumably requested that their contracts be terminated and their deposits to be refunded.

It took around three years for the defendant to complete these transactions in collaboration with other accomplices. The defendant could seize the deposits by taking advantage of the customers’ data leaked by one of the other convicts and reproducing the documents related to these transactions including the letters sent by these entities, which contained their seals as well as the signatures of their concerned officials and copies of their passports and ID cards. The defendant used these documents for typing fake proxies for the other convicts to submit on behalf of these entities for deposit refund.

In a seperate event, a 42-year-old Asian businessman was acquitted on Thursday of threatening to kill his 46-year-old compatriot unless she waived a complaint against him, accusing him of issuing a dud cheque. The victim claimed before the Dubai Public Prosecution she had lent the suspect money for investment and he gave her a cheque which she could not cash.

The victim’s daughter witnessed she heard the suspect threatening her mother through the phone speaker.

In a seperte case, the Dubai Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced two drivers, one of them to six months and the second to three months, to be deported after serving the jail term, on charges of stealing five statues tied to chains in front of a company warehouse and selling them to a scrap exhibition.

According to the accountant of the victim company, he discovered 5 statues were missing from the warehouse of the company. He reportedly contacted the owner of the company but did not respond so he informed the police. Surveillance cameras showed that 4 people stole one of the statues, but cameras did not show the features of the perpetrators clearly.

A corporal in Dubai Police testified they went to warehouses and companies selling furniture and statues and found two stolen statues. When they asked the owner of the company, he said he bought them from someone for Dhs5,000 and provided the police with his full information.

The police arrested the suspect who admitted he bought the statues from another person for Dhs2,500 before selling them for Dhs5,000 to another.

He also provided the police with the latter’s information who turned out to be one of the culprits.

He was arrested and admitted he sold the rest of the statues to a merchant in a neighbouring emirate.