Dubai Hotel Group Employees Convicted of Embezzlement From Their Employer's Bank Accounts
A huge Dubai hotel group embezzlement scheme has been acquitted following 14 out of 43 people who were charged. The court records show that the defendants--including private companies and former employees-- stole money from the company during the two-year period. During this period, the defendants stole money from the company. The defendants included employees from Egypt, Lebanon, Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Austria, Kenya, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong, between the ages of 31 and 56, in accounting and IT positions.
Between October 2016 and August 2018, the accused employees allegedly agreed to transfer sums of cash from their employer's bank accounts to other companies accounts. Prosecutors said that by forging the IBAN numbers in payment receipts, they diverted more than 26 bank transfers. When they received payments, they deleted the IBAN and account numbers of the companies and added legitimate account numbers to avoid being caught. An internal audit at the hotel group revealed discrepancies between the bank statements and the papers issued by its employees in the accounting department.
Dubai authorities launched an investigation into the matter, and the defendants were charged with multiple counts of embezzlement, money laundering, forgery, and falsifying documents. The defendants who worked at the IT department were accused of breach of trust by allowing their colleagues (the other defendants) to access confidential data of private and public establishments on the group's electronic system. On April 19 last year, seven defendants were fined Dh4.6 million and ordered to repay the same amount to the group. Two defendants were sentenced to a year in prison to be followed by deportation. The rest of the defendants were sentenced to one year in prison to be followed by deportation and were fined Dh150,000 each and jointly fined Dh4.4 million, and additionally ordered to pay back Dh4.4 million to the group.
Awatif Mohammed, an Emirati lawyer, argued the court's decision at Dubai's Court of Appeals. She said that her client joined the group in October 2017 and was on probation until March 2018 and that he was not involved in the incident that the prosecutor said began in October 2016. She explained, "He was a new employee who, as a result of the inaccurate information in the system and the discrepancies it presented, would not have been aware of it. It is not possible for him to have been involved in the false accusations." Her client was found guilty of forging electronic documents and registering fictitious accounting data on the employer's accounting system based on documents provided by the group, she said in court. The Dubai Appeal Court revoked her client's sentence and acquitted all 13 defendants, including her, of all charges in April 2017. The remaining defendants are still liable for their previous verdict.
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