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
If you read long enough, they start a section with "Cornelius undoubtedly committed fraud." I think the bigger takeaway is the lack of the rule of law. The crime he committed only carried a three-year jail term. This was later increased by trumping up the charge to 'fraud against the government' (because the government owned a minority stake in the bank) and then he was held in prison even beyond that term because he still owed payment on the loan despite the bank repossessing collateral worth several times the loan amount.

One of my additional takeaways here though is the failure of the British Foreign Office. Part of the service I expect my embassy to provide is assistance if I were to get caught up in a foreign legal system, even if this is only to connect me with a local lawyer. I also expect them to exert diplomatic pressure if the local courts or prosecutors are applying a double standard to foreigners.