The criminal court specialized in examining money laundering and tax evasion crimes in Abu Dhabi has convicted 13 defendants of Indian nationality, and seven companies owned by them, of committing the crime of money laundering obtained from practicing an economic activity related to providing credit facilities through point-of-sale devices without obtaining a license from the competent authorities. With a total amount of 510 million dirhams.
The court ruled in the presence of 4 defendants, and in absentia the rest of the defendants who escaped, with prison sentences ranging from five to ten years, the confiscation of seized funds, and the deportation of the convicts from the state after the execution of the penalty, with a fine ranging between five and ten million dirhams, and a fine of ten million dirhams for the convicted companies. .
The facts of the case are summarized in the formation of the defendants as a gang organization to commit the crime of practicing an activity related to the economic system to provide credit facilities without a license from the competent authorities, using point-of-sale devices of several companies, at the headquarters of a travel institution that was chosen as a location for practicing that criminal activity, and making fake purchases from Devices of companies established for this purpose, or by some of the defendants exploiting the powers granted to them to deal on bank accounts of companies owned by others without the knowledge of their owners, in return for deducting a percentage in favor of the company that owns and uses the POS device for each withdrawal.
The investigations of the Public Prosecution and the records of the collection of inferences showed that the criminal formation of the headquarters of the travel agency owned by two of the defendants was exploited to conduct cash payments from credit cards to customers wishing to do so, by carrying out fake purchases through point-of-sale devices of the companies owned by the defendants.
This is either by disbursing the amount in cash by making a purchase from the customer’s credit card in favor of the companies that were established only to issue these devices from banks for their account, with deducting an additional amount as interest, and handing the customer the remaining amount in cash, and the other method is by paying the customer’s debts incurred on his card by depositing amounts Cash in the account, then make another imaginary purchase and deduct the interest amount.
The reports of banking transactions and financial analysis issued by the Financial Information Unit also indicated the presence of high inflation in the funds in the bank accounts of the defendants and their companies, within a short period of time that would be impossible for such activity to occur if each of them practiced it in a legal way, in addition to conducting multiple financial operations on that money by withdrawing Deposit and transfer with the intention of concealing its source.
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