Eight people jailed and issued Dh80m fines on charges of money laundering and fraud in UAE

Dubai: The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court has convicted 8 people including four Emiratis, three Syrians and an Ethiopian, on charges of money laundering and committing fraud.

Each of the eight convicts has been fined Dh10 million and were all handed different jail terms ranging from 7 to 10 years. Four of the defendants will be deported after serving their jail terms, reported Arabic media.

The court also instructed competent authorities to confiscate all the funds used in the money laundering whether in or outside the country, in addition to any material or intangible assets owned by each of them. The court, however, acquitted two of the suspects.

Illegal car sale

The case came to light when the capital police received reports of many cars being allegedly bought with cheques with no money in bank. Investigations revealed that a gang is defrauding those wishing to sell their cars online.

Each member of the gang has been tasked with a certain job in every purchase process they gang initiate so that they won’t be caught. Some of them was asked to communicate with victims, others have had the vehicles registered under their names while some others used to issue dud cheques.

Money laundering

The Public Prosecution investigations have revealed that the investigators got suspicions of money laundering after checking the bank accounts of the accused because the bank balance of one of the defendants was not proportional to his monthly income.

The accused also would transfer the cars between themselves before selling them to others with the aim of concealing and disguising their illegal source of income.