Man denies forging documents to swindle Dubai World firm out of Dh2.1m

An HR manager for a Dubai developer denies forging documents to hire non-existent employees and pocketing the proceeds.

DUBAI // A man accused of using forged documents to get a job as a human resources manager at a Dubai developer and swindle it out of Dh2.1 million appeared in court yesterday to deny the charge.

MBS, a 45-year-old from Britain, is accused of using forged degree certificates to get his job at Limitless - part of Dubai World - and using further forgeries to hire non-existent employees while pocketing the proceeds between 2007 and 2008.

"These are not forged, these are originals," MBS told the presiding judge at the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance when shown the alleged forgeries in the prosecution's case file.

Prosecutors claim he paid £40,000 (Dh232,822) for a forged bachelor's degree in physics from the University of London and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Warwick. He was said to have been wanted by British police at the time of his arrest.

EB, the strategy section head at the company, said that MBS 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 presented a written defence to the court and asked it to issue a verdict.

"I have been in jail since May 2009," he told the court through a translator.

The verdict will be issued on April 24.