DUBAI 9 July 2017: Two public employees allegedly embezzled about half a million dirham by forging visa and other official documents, the Dubai Criminal Court heard.
IH, 40, Omani and HS, 37, Yemeni, customer service employees, are accused of cancelling some work and visit visas from a government institution in some cases and reduced fees in other cases and stole the fees and differences.
They stole Dh478,345 from 2008 to August 2011.
HS is also accused of stealing Dh8,000 from his employer in value of transactions fees.
IH told investigators that her colleague HS told her that she can make money by changing the type of transaction after processing the one asked by a client.
“After finishing the required transaction and printing him a correct invoice of the fees, I logged into the system and changed the transaction to another one of lower fees. I stole the difference between the two transition’s fees. Or, in other cases, I totally cancelled the application from the system and stole the full fees,” she admitted.
HS learned from the programmer, AN, how to change an application in the system. He taught IH and gave her the ID and password of AN. Against that he asked her to give him some of the amounts she stole and so she did.
She claimed that after a couple of months from starting the embezzlement she stopped being scared that these thefts would be discovered.
In August 2011, the woman was confronted with thefts by her employer.
She told investigators that she did not steal more than Dh100,000 and that she gave HS about Dh10,000 to Dh20,000.
However, her employer discovered that she stole Dh478,345.
HS admitted that he stole in the same way before teaching the colleague how to steal. He admitted to getting Dh15,000 from his colleague after teaching her how to steal.
The embezzlement was discovered in a routine auditing.
The court will reconvene on July 26.
By Lolyana Zaki