UAE | Crime
Municipality officials give testimony in Fujairah land fraud case
The director of Fujairah Municipality appeared in court on Sunday in the third hearings of the land fraud case involving his predecessor.
- By Fuad Mohammed Ali, Staff Reporter
- Published: 18:03 December 21, 2008
Fujairah: The director of Fujairah Municipality appeared in court on Sunday in the third hearings of the land fraud case involving his predecessor.
Mohammad Saif Al Afkham was called in as a witness in the landmark trial of Fujairah Municipality's former director and seven other suspects in a corruption case at Fujairah's Criminal Court.
Rashid Hamdan Abdullah was dismissed from his post earlier in 2008, after he was embroiled in serious allegations that he sold government land for his personal gain.
Another three Emiratis, three Egyptians and a Sudanese are also facing charges of accepting and offering bribes, falsifying official documents and assisting in deception and fraud.
During Sunday's hearings, Al Afkham told the court he first sensed there was something irregular after he received a complaint from a suspicious member of the public enquiring how official papers were signed on Friday, a non-working day for the municipality.
After examining the documents, Al Afkham says he referred the matter to the main suspect Rashid Hamdan, the then municipality director, who in turn ordered an investigation by the municipality's legal affairs department.
Al Afkham was questioned by the presiding judge, and lawyers for the defendants, about municipality application procedures for industrial and commercial land.
Another four witnesses appeared in court including H.M.I., the in-charge for the industrial land section at Fujairah Municipality, who told the court that the third suspect in the case, real estate agent Ali Al Ahbash, offered her Dh450,000 as a gift.
The Fujairah Public Prosecution case is based on months of interrogations of the suspects and the testimony and evidence provided by 19 witnesses.
Their case argues that Rashid Hamdan, and other suspects, systematically falsified applications for government-land properties using the names of fictitious applicants.
After acquiring valuable land allotments, some of the suspects then sold them on to unsuspecting individuals as ‘repossessed lands' for a knock-down price.
Dozens of such transaction was documented by the Public Prosecution team with witnesses stating they often paid as much as Dh400,000 for a number of land allotments only to later discover they are, in fact, still owned by other people.
Lawyers in the case submitted a summons for witnesses and a request for bail for all the suspects in the trial, which was rejected by the judge.
Lawyers also requested that copies are made available of the findings of the internal investigation by the municipality's legal affairs department.
The hearings were adjourned until the 18th of next month.
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