Dubai: Eight men have been jailed for three years each for kidnapping a gold merchant’s friend and stealing the merchant’s Dh1 million from him following a botched fake gold deal.
The eight men — three Ugandans, two Sudanese brothers, a Syrian, a Saudi and a Congolese — kidnapped the Indian friend of the merchant from a hotel while he was carrying a bag containing Dh1 million in cash while they were carrying out a gold deal in January 2016.
Four of the men called the Indian gold merchant twice to sell him gold bars before the deal was called off after the merchant demanded that he wanted to check the genuineness and quality of the bars.
At the third time they met, the Indian merchant accompanied by his countryman friend met the men at a hotel in Deira.
One of the men accompanied the merchant to a nearby store to check the genuineness of the bars while his friend waited with the cash at the hotel along with two of the defendants.
Shortly after, two other men [from among the eight] walked into the lobby, posed as policemen and asked the merchant’s friend to go outside with them.
Then they forced him into a vehicle, drove off to a construction site where they threatened him and stole the moneybag and ran away.
The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the eight defendants of kidnapping the merchant’s 25-year-old Indian friend, stealing Dh1 million and his mobile phone and assaulting him.
All the accused, who had pleaded not guilty, will be deported following the completion of their punishments.
The gold merchant said the incident happened after one of the Tanzanian brokers with whom he deals with contacted him and told him about a gold deal.
“The broker told me that his two friends, who are gold traders, were present in Dubai and wanted to discuss a gold deal with me. They called me and we met for the first time but when they refused to allow me to check the quality of the gold bars, I called off the deal. They called me a second time and the same thing happened. The third time we met, they had agreed to allow me to check the gold’s quality. My friend had accompanied me and he had the moneybag. I left him waiting in the hotel with two other men and went with a third man to check the gold. While I was in the taxi, my friend called me and told me that some men came to him and claimed to be from the police and they asked him to call me to return to the hotel. When I returned to the hotel, I discovered that my friend and the other two men had been missing. He did not answer my calls … 15 minutes later, my friend called me and told me that he had been kidnapped by a group of men who also took the moneybag from him and left him in the street. Thereafter, he came back and we reported the matter to the police,” he testified to prosecutors.
The 25-year-old friend confirmed the victim’s statement.
A police lieutenant said primary interrogations led to the arrest of the defendants separately and that the gold bars turned out to be fake.
The eight defendants have already appealed the primary court judgement.