Dubai: A man, who embezzled Dh885,000 from a car showroom after forging 95 e-receipts from Dubai Customs pertaining to import and export of cars, was jailed for three years on Tuesday.
The 26-year-old Syrian, M.B., tampered with the electronic receipts of Dubai Customs and used those forged documents to embezzle the money handed over to him to pay custom fees for importing/exporting cars between May 2012 and April 2014.
The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted M.B. [who worked for the showroom] of forging e-receipts on a computer and using the forged documents to embezzle the money.
“The accused will pay a fine of Dh150,000. He will be deported following the completion of his punishment,” said presiding judge Mohammad Jamal.
The accused had pleaded not guilty.
A Syrian manager at the showroom said the incident happened while the defendant worked for them as a public relations officer.
“The showroom’s accountant used to give the defendant money to complete transactions with Customs officials at Dubai and Abu Dhabi. M.B. used to take the cash from the accountant and sign collection receipts to be able to pay Customs fees pertaining to import and export of cars. After completing the Customs’ transactions he used to give us back e-receipts supposedly obtained from Dubai Customs against the cash he took. I doubted one of the receipts because it was printed poorly. When we examined the e-receipts that M.B. provided to us, we discovered a number of forgeries. I took a number of e-receipts and went to check their genuineness at Dubai Customs.
“We discovered that the receipts had been tampered with … the defendant had changed quantities and serial numbers of the receipts. We hired an accounting firm that did an audit and discovered that Dh338,000 had been embezzled. When we confronted M.B., he admitted that he forged nearly 95 e-receipts and embezzled around Dh885,000 between 2012 and 2014,” claimed the manager.
During prosecution questioning, the defendant was cited admitting that he tampered with the receipts and embezzled the money.
Tuesday’s ruling remains subject to appeal within 15 days.