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
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Fines for littering
In Dubai:
Dh200 for littering or spitting in the Dubai Metro
Dh500 for throwing cigarette butts or chewing gum on the floor, or littering from a vehicle.
Dh1,000 for littering on a beach, spitting in public places, throwing a cigarette butt from a vehicle
In Sharjah and other emirates
Dh500 for littering - including cigarette butts and chewing gum - in public places and beaches in Sharjah
Dh2,000 for littering in Sharjah deserts
Dh500 for littering from a vehicle in Ras Al Khaimah
Dh1,000 for littering from a car in Abu Dhabi
Dh1,000 to Dh100,000 for dumping waste in residential or public areas in Al Ain
Dh10,000 for littering at Ajman's beaches
