Mar.19, 2010

DUBAI — The Court of Misdemeanours acquitted on Thursday an Emirati, a British (both business partners), an Indian accountant, and a Pakistani manager of the charge of money laundering in a case seen as the biggest of its kind involving around £150 million.

The court panel presided by Judge Abdel Majid Al Nezami cleared also seven firms of the same charge. However, the court sentenced the four defendants to two months in jail each for forgery and ordered confiscation of about Dh18 million which was seized from them.

According to the case, the Organised Crime Section of Dubai Police was tipped off in August 2006 about the involvement of some individuals and firms in Dubai in money-laundering operations. The firms’ statements of accounts suggested that there were suspicious flow of funds, totalling £150 million.

A report presented recently by the Public Prosecution to the court came in favour of the defendants.

According to the report, prepared by a Dubai Police special committee comprising officers of the Organised Crime Section and inspection officers at the UAE Central Bank as well as prosecutors, there has been no proof to incriminate the defendants of money laundering. The alleged money laundering supposedly happened in a European country while there is still no registered case in that particular country, the defence lawyer said. “It could not be established that the big funds found were gained from a crime,” advocate Eissa Bin Haidar argued.

The committee could not track down the source of the funds transferred to two companies in Dubai — whether these funds were made by commercial transactions in sale and purchase of mobile phones between companies or whether they were ill-gained funds.

The Dubai Public Prosecution believed that the funds were made by cheating the Income and Customs Departments in two European countries where the defendants were trading in merchandise through fictitious contracts to raise the products’ market value and then re-export the same merchandise.

They would also transfer huge amounts of money through individuals and money exchange agencies to different parties without legal documents.

To cover these transfers, the defendants allegedly submitted forged documents to the UAE Central Bank to justify over Dh18 million found in the account of one of the companies owned by the defendants.