The Abu Dhabi\nCriminal Court, which has jurisdiction over money laundering and tax evasion\noffences, convicted 13 defendants of Indian nationality, and seven companies\nbelonging to them, for the offence of laundering money derived from the\npractice of an economic activity consisting in the provision of credit\nfacilities through points of sale (POS) without first obtaining a licence from\nthe competent authorities, for a total amount of 510 million dirhams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court sentenced 4 defendants in presence<\/em>\nand in absentia<\/em> as regards the accused on the run, to prison sentences\nranging from 5 to 10 years, the confiscation of the seized funds and the\ndeportation of the convicted persons from the country once their sentences have\nbeen served, together with a fine ranging from five to ten million dirhams. The\ncompanies involved in these crimes were each fined ten million dirhams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As regards the facts of the case, the defendants had\nset up a criminal organisation for the practice of an economic activity without\na licence from the competent authorities and which consisted of providing\ncredit facilities, using the points of sale of several companies, at the\nheadquarters of a travel agency which was chosen as a venue for this criminal\nactivity, and making false purchases through the POS of the companies created\nfor this purpose, or by the misuse by some of the defendants of the powers\ngranted to them to deal with the bank accounts of companies owned by third\nparties without the knowledge of their owners, in exchange for the deduction of\na percentage in favour of the company that owns and uses the POS device for\neach withdrawal operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The inquiries of the Public Prosecution and the\ninvestigation reports showed that the criminal group used the headquarters of\nthe travel agency owned by two of the defendants to make credit card payments\nto customers who wished to receive such services, by making fictitious\ntransactions through the POS devices of the companies owned by the defendants,\neither by paying on their behalf the amount in cash by making a purchase with\nthe customer’s credit card in favour of the companies that were set up solely\nto obtain these devices from the banks, with deduction of an additional amount\nas interest and giving the customer the remaining amount in cash, or by\nsettling the customer’s debts on his bank card by depositing amounts in cash on\nhis account and then making another fictitious purchase and deducting the\namount of the interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, the bank transaction reports and the financial\nanalysis issued by the Financial Information Unit (FIU) also indicated\nsignificant financial flows into and out of the bank accounts of the defendants\nand their companies in a short period of time that would be impossible within\nthe legal framework of their respective economic activities, in addition to a\nmultitude of financial operations on these accounts through deposits, withdrawals\nand transfers with the intention of concealing their source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over money laundering and tax evasion offences, convicted 13 defendants of Indian nationality, and seven companies belonging to them, for the offence of laundering money derived from the practice of an economic activity consisting in the provision of credit facilities through points of sale (POS) without first …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":42343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53724,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53723\/revisions\/53724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}