The UAE has seized and confiscated assets worth more than Dh4.73 billion ($1.29bn) in the 12 months to the end of July as the Arab world’s second-largest economy steps up its fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Assets worth Dh2.54bn were seized by authorities while assets worth Dh2.19bn were confiscated in the one-year period, Hamid Al Zaabi, director general of the UAE’s Executive Office of Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT), told The National in an interview.
UAE authorities have also frozen assets worth more than Dh13 million during the same period as the country, a financial centre in the Middle East, prioritises AML/CFT as part of its efforts to achieve its national strategy goals.
“The UAE takes these AML/CFT matters extremely seriously and this is the reason why it came up with the idea of the executive office to take the lead [role] in the system and focus on shaping policies and strategies, co-operation and engagement,” Mr Al Zaabi said.
“So, we now have a department working on domestic compliance and co-ordination, and a department that focuses on international co-operation, AML/CFT partnerships and communication.”
The UAE has made significant progress in combating money laundering, the financing of terrorism and weapons proliferation over the past few years.
The country's Financial Intelligence Unit — the central agency that works closely with authorities to determine links between possible proceeds of crime, money laundering or terrorist financing — reported a 51 per cent year-on-year rise in the number of suspicious transaction reports (STRs) in the first quarter of this year.
The financial sector, a main pillar of the UAE economy, contributed the vast majority of those STRs, the executive office said in August.
There was also a significant rise in the AML/CFT enforcement actions in 2021, with total enforcement actions exceeding Dh42m.
Authorities in the UAE confiscated more than Dh2.35bn in illicit assets last year, of which Dh15m was in gold and precious metals.
The number of people jailed for financial crimes reached 40 and fines worth Dh860m were handed down for fraud and money laundering.
In June, Dubai Police arrested hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah on an international warrant issued by authorities in Denmark.
Skat, Denmark's tax authority, alleged that Mr Shah, a British citizen, was a central player in a scheme in which foreign businesses pretended to own shares in Danish companies, before claiming tax refunds for which they were not eligible.
Authorities also worked closely with South African officials to arrest Atul and Rajesh Gupta after Interpol issued a red notice against them for allegedly looting billions from state-owned companies.
The UAE takes these AML/CFT matters extremely seriously and this is the reason why it came up with the idea of the executive office to take the lead [role] in the system and focus on shaping policies and strategies, co-operation and engagement
Hamid Al Zaabi,
director general of the executive office
Established in February last year, the executive office is charged with overseeing the enforcement of the UAE’s National AML/CFT Strategy and the National Action Plan (NAP), Mr Al Zaabi said.
The strategy, with 12 key goals to be achieved between 2020 and 2023, defines the UAE's approach to build an integrated system to speed up its response to money laundering crimes, as well as combat the financing of terrorism and illegal organisations.
Primarily a national policy and co-ordinating body on AML/CFT efforts, the executive office has a wide-ranging mandate to ensure the UAE has a sustainable and resilient AML/CFT framework and is currently co-ordinating with more than 80 government entities and law enforcement agencies in the country, said Mr Al Zaabi, who is the founding director general of the body.
“The EO priority is to develop [strategies] and follow up with all the government entities in the UAE on it Project Portfolio Management system (PPM), which is also used by a number of UAE ministers to have direct access to progress reports,” Mr Al Zaabi, said.
The PPM is a system “that ensures proper oversight of all agencies and maintains their compliance with the National AML/CFT Strategy and Action Plan”, he said.
Mr Al Zaabi, a senior law enforcement official with more than 20 years of experience in the fight against financial crimes and AML/CFT, has slowly built his team of experts from an initial 20 at the launch.
“Now we are talking about a team of 45 people in the executive office,” he said.
“But, at the same time we have a national group, a team [of experts], which is more than 200 people at different government entities.”
The executive office works with that group of experts and receives information that it uses in its tools and systems.
It plans to increase its staff strength to 50 by the end of this year and add another 25 experts next year, mostly compliance and data experts, he said.
The Public-Private Partnership Committee, chaired by the executive office, is co-ordinating closely with the private sector in the UAE to curb financial crimes in the country.
Through its three-year strategic plan, the committee, the first of its kind, is pushing to enhance the country's AML/CFT efforts in line with the criteria laid out by the Financial Action Task Force, he said.
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
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- Listen actively without interrupting
- Avoid assumptions, seek understanding, ask questions
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What: The Arab Women’s Sports Tournament is a biennial multisport event exclusively for Arab women athletes.
When: From Sunday, February 2, to Wednesday, February 12.
Where: At 13 different centres across Sharjah.
Disciplines: Athletics, archery, basketball, fencing, Karate, table tennis, shooting (rifle and pistol), show jumping and volleyball.
Participating countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Qatar and UAE.
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Also on December 7 to 9, the third edition of the Gulf Car Festival (www.gulfcarfestival.com) will take over Dubai Festival City Mall, a new venue for the event. Last year's festival brought together about 900 cars worth more than Dh300 million from across the Emirates and wider Gulf region – and that first figure is set to swell by several hundred this time around, with between 1,000 and 1,200 cars expected. The first day is themed around American muscle; the second centres on supercars, exotics, European cars and classics; and the final day will major in JDM (Japanese domestic market) cars, tuned vehicles and trucks. Individuals and car clubs can register their vehicles, although the festival isn’t all static displays, with stunt drifting, a rev battle, car pulls and a burnout competition.
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