Dubai: Dubai Police have arrested a man wanted in a bounced cheque case involving Dh3.3 million hours before he was to leave the country.
The Arab man wrote the cheque to a woman who lodged a police complaint leading to the arrest.
This was one of the 9,700 cases of bounced cheques registered at Al Rafa police station this year.
Brigadier Ahmad Bin Gulaitha, director of the police station, said his team had managed to settle bounced cheque cases involving Dh200 million in the first nine months of this year.
“We settled 1,084 bounced cheque cases this year and recovered Dh200 million for the victims. We arrested also 1,045 wanted persons in these cases,” Brig Bin Gulaitha said.
Among the wanted persons was a European man who was involved in 17 bounced cheque cases worth Dh1.7 million.
“Bounced cheque cases are the majority of complaints registered with Al Rafa police station because it is commercial area. We have formed a special team of officers and policemen to look into the cheque cases, bring about a settlement between the two parties and also arrest runaway suspects,” he added.
The cheque settlement programme involves negotiation between the two parties in the presence of police officers to solve the problem in an amicable manner. As soon as the parties reach an agreement, they sign a written undertaking in the police station that the issue has been resolved and the errant party would pay the money to the aggrieved party so that such cases need not be referred to the Public Prosecution.
In one of the cases, officers arrested an Asian man accused of issuing a cheque for Dh4 million, which bounced. He had been avoiding police and hiding in many places.
“We had laid traps on different occasions to arrest him until one day, he was arrested while he was walking to his company. We referred him to the public prosecution to complete the investigation,” Brig Bin Gulaitha said.
