UAE BARQ برق الإمارات – نبضك
The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over money laundering and tax evasion offences, has convicted 9 defendants and 6 companies for the offence of possession of sums of money amounting to 18 million dirhams, using fraudulent means through a computer based process.
As for the criminal scheme, one of the defendants, operating from outside the country, would contact the victims, claiming to be working for foreign investment companies specialising in crypto-currency trading and promising them huge profits. He would ask them to transfer their money to company accounts inside the UAE to convince them of his claims.
The accused persons are further prosecuted for the crime of money laundering through an organised criminal group, by transferring and concealing the truth of the proceeds of the predicate crime, possessing the sums of money and using them immediately upon receipt in internal bank transfers, depositing them in their bank accounts and then transferring them between the accounts of their companies and sending the larger part outside the UAE.
The court sentenced four of the accused of different nationalities in presence and in absentia for the other accused, to ten years’ imprisonment term and ten million dirhams fine each, with deportation from the country once their sentences served, except for the second accused. The court also sentenced the companies to a fine of fifty million dirhams each, with seizure of the funds involved in the crime of money laundering, whether cash in the accounts of the accused persons, or any of the material or moral assets belonging to them and resulting from the crime of money laundering, as well as the seizure of the proceeds and means used in the commission of the crime in any way whatsoever.
The discovery of this criminal activity, the arrest of the accused and their prosecution were made possible thanks to the effective measures taken by the various competent authorities, as part of the United Arab Emirates’ integrated efforts to combat money laundering offenses and as part of the measures taken by the UAE Central Bank and other financial institutions. It was also made possible thanks to the strength of the legislation and laws in force to combat this type of crime.
Regarding the details of the case and the modus operandi ; a number of persons fell victim to a fraudulent scheme set in motion by the accused by exhorting them to invest in a shell company, claiming that it specialised in trading digital currencies and shares in the global markets, and promised them quick profits of up to 30% in a week, and periodically encouraging them to raise the ceiling of their so-called investments to increase profits, however they set as a condition for the disbursement of the said profits to pay a tax, which aroused the suspicions of one of the victims who took the initiative to inform the competent authorities.
For its part, the Abu Dhabi Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated investigations into the case, which led, after research and enquiries by the relevant authorities, to the discovery of a fraudulent organisation that was specialised in swindling and defrauding the victims of their funds and then attempting to conceal their origin by means of inter-bank transfers. In fact, the monitoring of the movements of funds in the accounts of the accomplice companies generated suspicion about these bank operations, due to the rapid circulation of funds without economic justification or any supporting documents, which revealed the commission of money laundering offences. The Public Prosecution Service therefore took measures to freeze the assets in the accounts of the suspects and brought them before the competent court, which handed down a judgement condemning them for the offences with which they were charged.
