Former Deyaar chief executive Zack Shahin must stand trial again, court decides

On Monday, the Court of Cassation ruled the case should be returned to the Appeals Court to be heard before a new panel of judges although he was cleared of corruption charges in February 2013.

DUBAI // Zack Shahin, the former Deyaar chief executive who had his 15-year sentence for taking Dh20 million in bribes overturned by the Court of Appeal, must stand trial again.

On Monday, the Court of Cassation ruled the case should be returned to the Appeals Court to be heard before a new panel of judges.

Mr Shahin, 48, a Lebanese American, was originally convicted by the Criminal Court of misusing his powers during his tenure at the property company between 2004 and 2007.

He was responsible for managing the contract deals and the court found he deliberately approved bids at inflated prices in return for bribes.

In March last year at the Criminal Court K M, an Argentinian partner at Ambyance Technologies, F L, a Canadian project manager at Thermo and A S, British director general of Thermo, were also convicted of taking Dh10m in bribes and with aiding and abetting Mr Shahin.

All three were sentenced to 10 years in prison, jointly fined more than Dh28.5m and ordered to repay the same amount to Deyaar.

F L and A S, who are still at large, were also convicted of embezzling Dh500,000 each from their company. They were jointly fined Dh500,000 and ordered to repay the same amount to Deyaar.

The four were acquitted of forging invoices and using them.

All of the defendants appealed against their convictions and won.

Mr Shahin and K M were granted bail in July 2011 after a hunger strike by Mr Shahin.

Despite posting a Dh4.7m bail surety, Mr Shahin fled the country before being arrested in Yemen. K M also fled and is still at large.

D K, a projects evaluation manager at Thermo, said the offers for the bids were prepared by A S and F L before they were sent to Mr Shahin. A S sent a memo to all company executives not to coordinate with Deyaar directly, stating that all negotiations had to go through him and F L.

D K said they won three bids from Deyaar, the first was in June 2005 for U1 and U2 towers in Jumeirah Lakes at a value of Dh71.2m.

The second was in February 2006, of a tower in the Business Bay area worth Dh76.1m and the last was in December 2006 for the Metro Police Tower, also in Business Bay, for Dh55.8m.

M M, the director of Deyaar’s financial audit department, said that while auditing company records and the bank accounts of the defendants he uncovered financial irregularities.

He estimated that about Dh30.5m had been transferred between the defendants’ accounts.

Mr Shahin, who has been returned to jail, was not at the Cassation Court on Monday.

A date for the next hearing at the Court of Appeal was not set.