Dubai: A businessman has been accused of attempting to blackmail a beauty parlour manager and threatening to publish her photos if she refused to have sex with him.

The 30-year-old Iranian businessman, S.S., was said to have communicated with his 40-year-old countrywoman after getting her contact details from a newspaper promotion in which she advertised her Jumeirah-based beauty parlour.

Records said the woman invited the defendant to her residence where he took photos of her for business and promotion purposes.

Prosecutors charged S.S. with threatening to dishonour the woman by publishing her photos over the internet if she refused to have an affair with him.

“That is not true. I did not do that. She fabricated this case against me. Actually she is the one who told me that she wanted to blackmail someone sexually and extort money from him. She asked me to send an SMS to her mobile phone so she could forward it to that person,” argued S.S. when he defended himself before the Dubai Court of First Instance.

Meanwhile his lawyer provided the court with a written waiver that he obtained from the woman.

“Is that waiver enough not to send me to jail?” S.S. asked the judge.

“Nothing is confirmed. No body knows… we have to study the case file to be able to hand out a judgement,” replied presiding judge Al Mahdi.

The woman testified that S.S. phoned her in June 2011 and asked her to provide him with skincare products after he read about her parlour in a Persian newspaper.

“When we met, I gave him the products. Then he claimed that he was an experienced photographer. Then he offered to take some snaps of me to show me the quality of his work. He came over to my house and took several snaps… when I suspected his intentions, I told him that I was married. Then I didn’t take any of his calls. Later he sent me an SMS in Persian in which he claimed to have published my photos on the internet. The suspect wanted to become my boyfriend and intended to have sex with me,” the woman claimed to prosecutors.

A verdict will be heard on May 15.