Manager pretends to be Emirati to get end-of-service benefits

Dubai - He forged an Emirati passport copy to misappropriate Dh23,000, Dubai court told

by

Marie Nammour

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Published: Tue 27 Oct 2020, 3:40 PM

Last updated: Tue 27 Oct 2020, 3:45 PM

A manager allegedly misappropriated Dh23,000 from the bank he worked for before he resigned, the Dubai Court of First Instance has heard. Court documents show how the 28-year-old Bangladeshi unlawfully used the access credentials of an Emirati colleague to make a copy of his passport without his knowledge.

The defendant then allegedly forged an Emirati passport copy bearing his name and photo. He used this to unlawfully collect benefits meant for Emirati employees.


The alleged crime ran from June 2019 to March 2020. A complaint was lodged at Al Rashidiya police station. The manager is facing charges of fraud and embezzlement of public funds, forgery and unlawful access into an e-system.

The head of the counter-fraud section at the bank said the defendant was a human resources manager in the business section. “He used to wear traditional Emirati clothes and pretend to be a UAE national.”


The administration offered an end-of-service scheme for employees wishing to resign that was to start in September 2019. In his deposition during the investigation, the section head recounted how a private auditing firm discovered a discrepancy committed by an employee who benefitted from the scheme before it was even launched.

“That employee — the defendant — submitted his resignation and collected the benefits in August 2019. I then requested his file from the administration and checked his ‘Emirati’ passport copy. It was issued in 2019, but expired in 2017. One of the details was erased from the defendant’s passport, too.”

The witness checked other personal documents of the employee and immediately spotted “suspicious” details. “I found that he was born in Bangladesh and studied there. I then remembered how he used to proclaim himself as an Emirati to other staff. I found that he collected his end-of-service benefits as an Emirati, with an extra amount of Dh23,000.”

He suspected that the employee’s ‘Emirati’ passport copy could be fake when he found a copy of a Bangladeshi passport in his file. The defendant was found to have forged the passport copy to be eligible for a benefit which he did not deserve. A complaint was filed. The witness learned later that the defendant reached a settlement with the bank and returned the additional amount he had received.

A police sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) said that an arrest warrant was issued following a complaint from the bank. “We arrested him near a petrol station in Al Qusais. During interrogation at the police station, the accused admitted to the charges.”

The trial has been adjourned to November 23.

mary@khaleejtimes.com


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