Jail for Limitless HR manager who swindled company out of Dh2.5m

An HR manager for a Dubai developer who embezzled Dh2.5m has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

DUBAI // A human resources manager who swindled the Dubai developer Limitless out of almost Dh2.5 million was today sentenced to 12 years in prison.

MBS, a 45-year-old Briton, was ordered by the Dubai Criminal Court to repay the company Dh2,423,128 and pay the same amount as an additional fine.

Prosecutors said the human resources manager had gained employment in 2007 using forged university certificates which he bought for £40,000 (Dh232,822). One was supposedly a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of London and another was a master's degree in business administration from the University of Warwick.

They said he also hired non-existent employees and charged the company for their salaries.

EB, the strategy section head at the company, said that the human resources manager had supposedly hired a Russian employee on a monthly salary of Dh125,000. However, when he found a resume supposedly written by the Russian, the writing appeared similar to that of the human resources manager.

The section head said he became suspicious and hired a detective agency to track down the Russian. The agency could not find him, and the section head informed police.

Officers discovered that the human resources manager had a criminal record in Britain and that a warrant for his arrest was issued in England in 1999, the court heard. Prosecutors said he wired the embezzled money to a bank in Cyprus.

The human resources manager denied charges of forgery, use of forged documents, embezzlement, obtaining a fake degree, and hiring fake employees.