Dubai: A cargo supervisor has been accused of forging the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment’s stamp on a plant health certificate to allow a shipment of peanuts to be exported to Russia.
The 37-year-old Pakistani cargo supervisor was said to have forged the ministry’s stamp on the plant health certificate and given it to an Iranian merchant to submit to the Russian authorities, who had refused to allow his shipment of peanuts into the market in 2014.
Once the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment’s employees discovered that the plant health certificate bore a forged stamp, according to records, they alerted the police.
Primary interrogations revealed that the cargo supervisor and another Indian man [who worked in the cargo industry] were involved in processing the forged certificate.
Prosecutors accused the 37-year-old and the Indian man, who remains at large, of forging the ministry’s stamps on the plant health certificate and using the forged paper.
The Pakistani failed to appear before the Dubai Court of First Instance where he was scheduled to enter his plea on Sunday.
Presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi said the suspect will be sentenced in absentia on January 18.
One of the ministry’s employees claimed to prosecutors that they discovered that the certificate was forged shortly after the Russian authorities refused to permit the shipment into their market without an attested certificate.
The Iranian merchant testified to prosecutors: “My countryman businessman told me in 2014 that he had shipped a consignment of peanuts to Jebel Ali Port to be reshipped to Russia … but the shipment was not allowed into the Russian market due to the lack of a proper plant health certificate. I volunteered to help him and when I sent my employee to the ministry, he was informed that the certificate was forged.”
Records said police investigations led to the arrest of the cargo supervisor who was involved in forging the ministry’s stamps on the certificate.