Dubai: An investor, who caused a Dh8.4 million loss to the Dubai Economic Department (DED) by tampering with electronic transactions, was sentenced to two years in jail.

The 30-year-old Egyptian investor, W.E., forged e-transactions relating to discounts for trade licences issued by DED and embezzled the amount in March.

Three other Egyptians, A.A., a businessman; M.R., an employee; and A.S., a typist; as well as a Syrian typist, A.N., aided and abetted the investor in committing the forgery and fraud.

The Dubai Court of First Instance also sentenced the other four defendants [A.A., M.R., A.S. and A.N.] to two years in jail each.

M.R. and A.S. had pleaded not guilty.

W.E., A.A. and A.N. were sentenced in absentia after they failed to appear in court.

Presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi also fined each of the accused Dh150,000.

The five convicts will be deported following the completion of their punishments.

Records said W.E. abused the authority granted to him to carry out transactions at a mall’s business centre, from where he accessed DED’s e-system, forged transactions and embezzled Dh8.4 million.

A DED official testified that the fraud was detected after a client visited the department to discuss a discount.

“The client came to the registration section to revise a transaction and informed them that he had received a discount twice before. When we discovered that there was a discount larger than the usual, we checked the system. It was discovered that W.E. had accessed the e-system to renew a licence without collecting the Dubai Municipality fees. The revised transaction clearly showed that the suspect had bypassed the box of fees and renewed the licence … he tampered with the mentioned fees. Further investigations with the IT section unveiled that more transactions had been processed against discounts within the past two years. When we asked the applicants about those transactions, we realised that the transactions had been carried out at a mall’s fast track business centre. We contacted the centre’s manager, who informed us that W.E. had recently aroused his suspicion when he accessed the e-system and switched off the surveillance camera system,” he said.

A police lieutenant said upon questioning W.E. the latter admitted that he had carried out a number of illegal transactions for monetary gain.

“Further interrogations revealed that the four other defendant had aided and abetted W.E.,” he added.

The ruling against M.R. and A.S. remains subject to appeal within 12 days.

Those sentenced in absentia are entitled to a retrial.