Six months down the line, customers are still awaiting goods from AWOL shipping firm

Some customers of Relogulf who contacted The National said they have lost family photos and other sentimental objects, while some corporate clients are owed thousands of dirhams.

The Relogulf warehouse in Dubai Investment Park was locked and deserted when our photographer visited the site. Sarah Dea / The National

DUBAI // Elena Sovorova has 17 cardboard boxes filled with her most treasured possessions sitting in a locked warehouse in Dubai.

The goods, which contain important keepsakes and family photos, were supposed to be shipped by a relocation company in July last year when she left the country to make a new life for herself in Melbourne, Australia.

But because the shipping firm, Relogulf, failed to complete the shipment, the 42-year-old has spent the past six months trying to get her belongings back from the company’s warehouse and head office in Dubai Investment Park.

“There’s nothing of real value there,” she said. “But to me, it’s worth more than any amount of money. There are pictures of my son growing up that will be lost for ever if I can’t get these things back.”

Ms Sovorova is not alone. The National has received complaints from more than a dozen Relogulf customers in the past six months who said they had paid full shipping fees to the company and yet had not received their goods.

One corporate client, who declined to be named, used the firm’s services to transport goods worth more than Dh1 million between Thailand and Egypt. “As far as we know, they have not left Dubai in over a year,” the company’s manager said.

Relogulf is run by Britons Neil Price and Philip Davis, who are variously listed as managing partners of Relogulf as well as affiliated companies British Budget Removals and Sovereign Removals.

Court records show 12 bounced cheque cases against a Neil Leyman Price. The records indicate that Price was sentenced in 10 of those cases, although it is not clear whether he is currently serving a jail sentence.

Mr Davis did not respond to requests to confirm whether this is the same Neil Price who is his business partner at Relogulf.

In January, Mr Price said the company was waiting for an investor to provide funds to clear outstanding debts with freight-forwarding companies. The investor was alleged to have visited Dubai earlier this year and met shipping firms to assure them the money would be paid.

Mr Price could not be reached for comment on whether the investor had indeed helped the firm to pay off any of its outstanding debts.

Asiatic Freight Forwarding, a Dubai-based shipping firm that in January was owed Dh130,000 by Relogulf, yesterday declined to comment.

Mr Davis would say only that reports they had fled the country were “incorrect”.

Several former employees are pursuing money through the courts for unpaid salaries over the course of 2013, totalling more than Dh100,000. The company’s warehouse and head office is locked.

Some customers of Relogulf have had a measure of success in retrieving their goods by hiring other relocation firms to take on the shipments.

Easytruck Removals has helped several people whose goods were languishing, unsent, in Dubai.

Since March, however, the company has been unable to make any firm contact with staff at Relogulf.

“It’s a real mess,” said Ginene Thama, business development manager at Easytruck. “There are people with stuff stuck in the port and in warehouses all over Dubai.”

Ms Sovorova said she had attempted to hire another firm, Leader Relocations, to retrieve her belongings, to no avail so far.

Hari Krishnan, a move consultant at the firm, said last week he had tried on several occasions to retrieve the goods.

“Every time we go there, it is locked,” he said. “The security guard near by said he hadn’t seen anyone coming and going from the building in a long time.”

Ms Sovorova said she became resigned to the fact long ago that she has lost the Dh5,000 she paid to ship the boxes to Australia.

“I’m not asking about the money, I don’t mind losing that,” she said. “I just want my things back. If I lose them I’ll be heartbroken.”