UAE Court Convicted 13 Indian Nationals and 7 Companies for Money Laundering Offenses

Thirteen Indian nationals and seven companies were charged with money laundering by the Abu Dhabi Court in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The guilty party laundered AED510m ($139m) through point-of-sale crimes.

The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court prosecutes criminal offences related to tax evasion and money laundering. This court convicted 13 Indian nationals and 7 companies owned by them. Point-of-sale crimes in the UAE were laundered for AED510m ($139m). The court ruled that credit facilities were used at points of sale (POS) without prior authorisation from the competent authority to engage in economic activity.

The court sentenced four defendants, some present during the trial and some absent, to imprisonment for five to ten years, as well as fines of between five and ten million AED. Moreover, the UAE court ordered that all convicted individuals be deported from the country upon serving their sentences and confiscating the seized funds.

The convicts formed criminal organisations to conduct economic activities without authority approval and provided credit facilities. Using the point of sale system, 7 companies used the travel agency headquarters as the venue for criminal activities that they explicitly created to conceal the illicit activities. In addition, they misused their powers to deal with bank accounts controlled by third parties without their owners’ knowledge. Some of the defendants made false purchases. A percentage will be deducted for each withdrawal operation for the company that owns and uses the POS.

Moreover, both the financial analysis issued by the Financial Information Unit (FIU) and the bank transaction reports indicates that significant amounts of money have been transferred into and out of the defendants’ bank accounts within the last few weeks, which would not have been possible under the circumstances of their respective economic activities. The reports issued by the FIU had a multitude of transfers, deposits, withdrawals, and other financial transactions that the companies tried to conceal.

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