Real estate broker jailed and fined for embezzling Dhs471,000 from investor

Dubai Misdemeanor Court sentenced a real estate broker to six months in jail to be followed by deportation and fined him Dhs471,000 for using the power of attorney granted to him by a Gulf investor to manage and settle real estate disputes and embezzling the same amount of the fine.

The court also ruled that the civil lawsuit be referred to the competent court and that the real estate management company and its manager to be acquitted of the charge of being involved in the embezzlement.

Earlier, a Gulf investor reported to the police that over Dhs1 million in rents for a number of properties he owned in Dubai had been embezzled. He stated that he had granted a power of attorney to the defendant, who worked in a real estate management company, but he had not received the accumulated rents.

He had a group of properties in Dubai and relied on the defendant to manage them, he added, noting that recently an accountant in his company informed him that the defendant had not lately deposited the rents on some properties.

The accountant contacted the tenant of one of his villas who told her that he had already settled in cash the rent of the villa of Dhs150,000 under a receipt to this effect, he said.

The victim stated in the interrogations that he contacted a number of tenants who had not paid their rents for last year and previous years and they all told him that they had already paid the rents to the defendant in cash and cheques and were given receipts accordingly.

When the victim asked him, the defendant told him that he no longer had any money in his possession and that a dispute resolution committee was considering the cases that he filed with respect to the rents of all tenants who had not paid the rents for previous years, including the villa tenant, he said.

A policeman stated in the interrogations that when he was summoned, the defendant denied he possessed any money that belonged to the investor and that he used to hand the rents over to the company’s accountant without getting any receipts in return.

The company manager denied any connection to any dealings between the defendant and the investor, who had worked together for around four years. Earlier, the investor granted the defendant a special power of attorney and was dealing with him individually without the company’s knowledge, he said.

According to the official documents, an accounting expert was appointed and his report proved that the defendant had embezzled Dhs471,000 in rents under receipts that he had signed. The report showed that neither the defendant nor the company he worked for had any receipts that would prove that the money had been deposited.