Bank manager jailed for Dh26m fraud
Another official jailed for opening accounts to which manager transferred money
Abank branch manager has been jailed for five years and fined Dh26 million for embezzling an equivalent amount from a businessman using deceptive methods and forged documents over four years.
The Emirati branch manager and his countryman administrative officer were reported to have defrauded the 55-yearold Emirati businessman of Dh26 million over a period of four years.Yesterday, the Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the manager of creating two phoney bank accounts and transferring money from the businessman’s account to those accounts.
Besides fining the convicted manager Dh26 million, presiding judge Urfan Omar also ordered the defendant to repay an equivalent amount.
Presiding judge Omar sentenced the administrative officer to three years in jail on four counts and acquitted him of three other charges.
According to the judgement, the court decided to seize Dh5.7 million of the transferred funds.
The court also referred the victim’s civil lawsuit to the Dubai Civil Court.
How it was done
The convicted manager of a local bank’s branch in Nad Al Hamar used his authority to change the private details [mobile number and postal address] of the victim and applied for net banking services to transfer the latter’s money to the phoney accounts.
The convicted administrative officer opened the bank accounts in his name so that the manager could transfer the businessman’s money to those accounts in different money transfer operations such as cheques, bank-to-bank and online transfers.
Shortly after the victim realised that his money had disappeared, he alerted the bank’s management before an internal investigation exposed that the businessman had been transferring his money to other accounts.
Upon confronting the victim with the findings, the client denied issuing any cheques or doing any online or bank-tobank money transfers or cash withdrawals.
The two defendants had pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.