Businessman accused of forging rent papers of hotel worth Dh20m

Dubai: A businessman has been accused of forging the signature of a merchant to rent a hotel in Naif area for Dh20 million.

The 37-year-old Indian businessman, V.O., was said to have fabricated rent papers and forged the signature of the Emirati merchant by changing the original rent value from Dh42.5 million to Dh20 million.

Prosecutors accused V.O. of forging the rent papers and submitting them to Dubai’s Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera).

The businessman pleaded not guilty and denied the accusation of forging the rent papers when he showed up before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Wednesday. “I did not sign or forge or ink the papers. Another man [whom he identified as the merchant M.H.] signed the documents and gave them to me to submit to Rera,” V.O. argued before presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi in court.

According to the charge sheet, prosecutors said the suspect and an unidentified suspect forged a rent document issued on behalf of the hotel owner. The defendant forged the papers on a typing machine that he used to type the papers to make them look as if he had obtained them from the hotel’s real owner. He tampered with the rent price and reduced it from Dh42.5 million to Dh20 million.

An Emirati trader claimed to prosecutors that he signed a business deal with the suspect to buy from V.O. scrap materials [for pipes and pumps] worth Dh10 million.

“He gave me a cheque worth Dh2.5 million as part of the deal. We had agreed that the first cash payment would be Dh2.5 million and the remaining payment deferred until the products are delivered. I paid him the money in cash but when the deal was not completed, he gave me a cheque against that payment [Dh2.5 million]. He gave me a written undertaking issued by his wife in which she promised to pay me Dh2.5 million. The suspect gave me that cheque claiming that it was part of other cheques over a hotel rent deal that he claimed to have signed with the merchant M.H. Later I discovered from the notary public’s records that the signatures on the rent papers were forged. The papers that he had obtained from Rera were also forged,” claimed the trader.

Records said the defendant was arrested after the trader complained against him.

The trial continues.