Dubai: Two men, who hacked into a services company’s system and divulged secret information to its competitors, were each fined Dh500,000 in what is believed to be the highest fine in a cybercrime case.

A Nepalese manager, G.S., and an Indian salesperson, C.N., hacked into the e-system of a support services’ company, breached the confidentiality of its clients’ data and divulged them to the company’s rivals in local market between December 2013 and February 2014.

The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted G.S. and C.N. of breaching the cybercrime law by hacking into the company’s system in an illegal manner, stealing secret information and divulging those information to the rivals in a malicious intent.

In what is believed to be one of the highest fines to be slapped against cybercrime law offenders, presiding judge Urfan Omar fined the duo Dh500,000 each.

The Nepalese and Indian defendants will also have to spend one year in jail each.

“The accused will be deported following the completion of their punishments. The company’s civil lawsuit will be referred to the Dubai Civil Court,” said presiding judge Omar.

According to Thursday’s ruling, the Indian defendant was sentenced in absentia.

The victimized company’s director testified that a hospitality group informed them by email that they had been receiving emails from anonymous senders asking them [the group] to stop dealing with the company.

“The group notified us by email that the senders had been hampering our image and claiming that our company has problems with several clients. Further interrogations, revealed that the sender of those emails had breached the security of our e-system and hacked into confidential data pertaining to our clients. They also copied and pasted those data and emailed them to our rivals to ruin our image in front of those clients and to push them to stop dealing with us. Our enquiry unveiled that the culprits had accessed the e-system through the emails and accounts of former colleagues. We further discovered that the defendants [G.S. and C.N.] and other some of our former staff had established a rivalling company … and they were the ones who had been stealing our clients’ data and divulging them to our competitors,” claimed the director.

A policeman testified that G.S. was arrested as soon as he was identified since he had worked for the victimized company.

G.S.’s verdict remains subject to appeal within 15 days.