Limitless embezzler has his jail time halved

Court of Appeal reduces jail sentence against HR manager who embezzled millions of dirhams from Dubai developer from ten to five years.

DUBAI // A human resources manager for a Dubai developer who embezzled millions of dirhams yesterday had his 12-year jail term cut to six years by the Court of Appeal.

The court reduced the man's 10-year sentence for embezzlement to five years, and a two-year term for hiring fake employees to one year.

The Briton MBS, a 45-year-old who was working for the developer Limitless at the time of the fraud, will still have to repay the Dh2,423,128 he embezzled from the company, as well as paying a fine of the same amount after the court upheld the penalties from the Criminal Court. He is to be deported after his jail terms.

Court records said the manager spent £40,000 (Dh233,000) to obtain two fake degrees - purportedly a bachelor's in physics from the University of London and a master's in business administration from the University of Warwick - and used these to gain employment with Limitless in 2007.

Once working with Limitless, he embezzled money between 2007 and 2008 by fiddling recruitment costs and hiring non-existent employees. He charged the company a Dh125,000 monthly salary for one such employee.

EB, the strategy section head at Limitless, which is part of Dubai World, became suspicious when he noticed the CV of one of the non-existent employees and saw that the handwriting was similar to that of the HR manager.

The section head hired a detective agency to track down the bogus employee, and when it could not find him the section head informed police.

Officers discovered that the manager had a criminal record in Britain, where an arrest warrant had been issued in 1999.

They also found he had wired the embezzled money to a bank in Cyprus.