ABU DHABI // Two employees and five customers who embezzled Dh10 million from Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank have had their three year jail sentence reduced to two years by the Court of Appeal.
The five Emirati men, one Palestinian man and one Moroccan woman manipulated the results of the bank’s Ghina account contest to ensure they received the prizes of Dh2 million each.
Ghina is a savings account with ADIB that gives anyone with a balance of Dh20,000 or more the chance of winning a prize draw.
The first embezzler, a Palestinian employee of the bank, was in charge of deciding the draw results after he received a file containing the entrants from the IT department.
He then replaced that original file with one that contained only the names of his five co-defendants, so they would win the prize.
He then conspired with the second defendant, an Emirati marketing manager at the bank, whose Moroccan wife was one of the winners.
The pair had previously planned with the five others to open accounts at the bank at the same time to enter the contest.
After the results were announced, a customer service agent became suspicious when he saw that all the winners had opened their accounts at the same time and deposited the exact same amounts.
He reported his findings to the bank administration and they discovered that the first defendant had manipulated the results of the draw.
The seven were originally sentenced to three years in jail by the First Instance Court, plus deportation for the Moroccan woman and Palestinian man.
While the Court of Appeal upheld the deportation orders, it reduced a fine that the woman had been ordered to pay to Dh250,000.
The court did not reveal why she was ordered to pay that amount or what the previous amount was.
hdajani@thenational.ae
