zlacker

>>Geeket+(OP)
One of many reasons that I will never enter the UAE. There is no rule of law, and so no protection if anyone decides to charge you for anything. I've read of women being raped and then being charged for reporting it which essentially admits sex outside of marriage, or of foreigners who get driven into by a local and then charged as if they were the ones being reckless.

That's not even going into their de facto slavery with foreign construction workers, environmental damage, and sexism.

>>JohnGB+vf
For those who did not bother to read the article, it is about fraud during the financial crisis. I feel sad for Cornelius and wish he is set free. As a resident of Dubai for 30 years, I am always curious to learn things that I may have missed about 'my city', yet this article is misleading in many ways, its few first paragraph where it states that Ryan Cornelius 'thought the authorities had simply made a mistake;' Really? He has taken a loan to complete a project in Dubai yet he took the money for a project in Pakistan. Later the writer says'Cornelius’s business forged invoices for items such as furniture and building materials to match the investment capital being funnelled to the Plantation. A later civil case, brought by dib in Britain, concluded that Cornelius was “fully implicated” in the creation of fabricated invoices to perpetrate a fraud'. The Economist used to be a decent publication with great journalism, unfortunately that is not the case anymore.

>>Teraco+hT
Yeah, they really buried the admission of fraud pretty deep in the article. They forged invoices and spent 342m on unauthorized riskier projects. Sounds like the sentence may be excessive, but not the conviction.

>>dahdum+IY
Because it isn't really relevant if he was guilty or not. Being arrested for a crime, forced to sign a document in a language you don't understand, no access to legal or diplomatic representation, repeatedly denied any hearing or appeal, and charged with a crime retroactively is what is being questioned.

This article is not about someone's innocence, it's about the system and processes, some of which are considered illegal by the UAE's own constitution.