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
It is less about fraud and more about the existence of draconian laws (imprisoning debtors) in a place that professes modernity and manipulation of or utter disregard for said laws by those in high places. All parties including the main lender knew about the irregularities you cited, yet they agreed to restructure the loan. The man's fraud charge normally carries a 3 year sentence but he's still in prison 13 years later because his sentence got extended based on the bank's request.

>>Geeket+q31
Imprisoning debtors has been a request from British banks to operate in the country. Yes, banks wield vast powers but when you are playing with billions you gotta pay to play .I lost my life savings in that crisis, for no reason at all on my part. It was the greed of banks and many fraudsters . I was rightfully imprisoned in Dubai, which is very rare to admit, I was drunk on a public beach and kissing my girlfriend in Ramadan, in jail for 24 hours, every prisoner there claimed to be innocent, even a Russian mafia thug, that was as hilarious as this article form the Economist.

>>Teraco+w71
" I was drunk on a public beach and kissing my girlfriend in Ramadan,"

Oh man, the trifecta - Alchohol, Ramadan+Beach + With a woman not a member of your family. In the three+ months I was in Dubai in 2015, I was nervous even shaking hands in a business meeting with a woman (and obviously would never do so with a local woman, couldn't even be in an elevator alone with one) - was instructed very strictly about appropriate behavior during Ramadan (don't expose your knees on the beach).

Counter Intuitively, I've never been in any city in the world where the hotel lounges were so aggressive in serving alcohol. I ended up drinking more alcohol in Dubai in a month than I would the rest of the year in other cities around the world.