Three men charged with embezzlement

dubai — The Dubai public funds prosecution has referred three men to court for embezzlement of Dh515,345 in two cases. In the first case, the public prosecution referred two employees at a semi-government firm to the Court of First Instance on the charge of embezzling Dh478,345 worth of transaction fees from customers.

The two employees have also been charged with forging applications for issuing visas; renewal and stamping of residence visas; and issuing employment cards, visas and visit visas.

They have also been accused of forging formal letters to various government departments by abusing their posts and logging onto the e-system to cancel some of those applications and tampering with the data of other forms. Data tampering included changing the fees to make them lower and then embezzling the difference.

The prosecutors have also charged one of them with embezzling Dh8,000 worth of fees collected from customers.

Ismail Hasan Madani, head of the public funds prosecution, pointed out that the employees were charged after a report by the Financial Control Department concluded they tampered with the e-data to pocket money for themselves. The advocategeneral said the two ex-employees admitted during investigation

Two ex-employees admitted during investigation to the charges .” Ismail Hasan Madani, head, public funds prosecution

to the charges of breach of trust, abuse of post, embezzlement and forgery.

In another case, an employee has been referred to court after being charged with embezzling Dh29,000 worth of more than 3.9 million reward points given by a telecommunication provider to its customers.

“While on the job, he realised many customers had reward points which they had not used yet. He abused his access privilege and logged on the e-system and accessed the customers’ files in which he changed their mobile numbers linked with the reward points programme, replacing them with his own number. He then claimed on the e-system he had lost the passwords to those accounts,”Madani said:

He managed to get the passwords via SMS on his mobile phone number and thus could log onto many customers’ accounts. He availed of their reward points by either making purchases or turning them into free vouchers he used later.

The public prosecution referred him to the Court of First Instance on charges of embezzlement of public money, forgery and use of forged e-documents.

mary@khaleejtimes.com