The first-instance court’s decision against 18 defendants of different nationalities who were found guilty of embezzling almost Dhs185 million from a legal firm, money laundering, leaking confidential business information, and using it to create phony firms in the UAE and elsewhere has been maintained by the Dubai Court of Appeal.
The defendants were found guilty by the court of creating a fraud network that used three companies they set up for this purpose to launder the stolen money, according to case papers. According to reports, they exploited client information from a law firm in Dubai from 2014 to 2020. Four of them were given three-year jail terms with deportation by the court of first-instance, while the other accused were given one-year penalties with deportation. Four others were exonerated due to a lack of evidence, and two were also fined Dhs 20,000 each.
As part of the decision, Dhs113.65 million in monies equal to the money laundering crime’s earnings were seized. Three businesses that the accused formed were also fined Dhs500,000 apiece. One of the key suspects in a case involving the main allegations was cleared by the court of breach of trust in a different session.
The issue began when the legal firm’s owner filed a complaint, alleging that a previous manager and several staff members had embezzled money by creating fake businesses under his firm’s name and falsifying official documents.
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