Worker ‘took bribes to forge court rulings’

A Public Prosecution employee has been accused of accepting bribes to forge more than 100 court rulings.

His lawyer denied the claims in court saying one of the incidents for which the defendant is accused dates to when the Emirati was 7 years old.

“He was born in 1996, and one of the forgeries that the prosecutors claim my client had done happened in 2003. I don’t understand how this could possibly be true,” Saeed Al Ghilani said.

Mr Al Ghilani said more of the alleged forgery incidents attributed to the defendant occurred while he was in custody.

He told the court that even the arrest warrant issued against his client was void.

“It held a generic reason for the arrest,” Mr Al Ghilani said. “It said ‘arresting suspect for receiving money’, but what does that mean? We all receive money. The court should not take this warrant and every procedure that followed it into consideration.”

Prosecutors said the accused pocketed more than Dh154,000 in bribes to change 103 rulings. They said that in one case, he took between Dh1,000 and Dh1,500 from six defendants to change the rulings against them into fines.

Records claim that he altered rulings issued in the defendants’ absence by the Courts of Misdemeanours, Appeal and Residency.

He worked at Public Prosecution’s criminal rulings execution departments but police received a tip-off in April 2016 about changed judgments issued between January 2015 and March 2016.

Chief Prosecutor Salem bin Khadem carried out a 15-month investigation, after which the employee was officially charged with abusing his position, accepting bribes, forgery and accessing the classified filing system.

Three Indian men who worked for a law company in Dubai, a Jordanian public prosecution employee and a Yemeni inspector at a government department were charged with aiding and abetting the defendant.

Two other Indian defendants, also charged with aiding and abetting, remain at large.

Records show that after altering the rulings, the accused would print out the new judgments with a confirmation that the ruling had been executed.

The court was told that the defendant changed a sentence of six months in jail against a defendant in a case concerning a bounced cheque to a Dh10,000 fine, and changed another sentence of six months and deportation to a Dh2,000-fine.

The defendant and five others appeared in court, where they denied all of the charges against them.

The search for the two accused still at large is continuing.