DUBAI, 31 October 2007 — The Dubai police last week handed over to the public prosecution the files of a gang that laundered 18 billion dirhams for international criminal cartels.
The gang’s web had spun the globe from New Zealand and Australia going across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Their arrest is having a domino effect on other criminal gangs in other parts of the world as police forces now have enough evidence to arrest them.
The details of the case were revealed during the Arab Forum for Strategic Planning and Cooperation in Combating Drugs. Maj. Yousuf Al-Adeedi, who was in charge of the operation, said that it took the police more than two years of diligent work before they managed to catch the criminals. He said that they began investigating the gang after receiving a tip-off.
In order to catch the gang, the police had formed a special force for the task named Operation Cancer. It was headed by financial and banking fraud expert Younus Yousuf Al-Moalem.
At the conference, Al-Moalem, who heads the Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Section of the Dubai police, said that the team consisted of investigators, legal experts and a delegation from the UAE Central Bank.
“We had to go through so much data and monitor the gang for months before we managed to get enough evidence to charge them with the crime,” he said.
Al-Moalem pointed out that the case was a classic example of how criminal gangs have adapted to globalization. “The gang did not have one leader but four masterminds who were based in Dubai. They were an American, Indian, a Pakistani and a Dutch citizen. Each one of them had a particular area in which he worked and excelled in,” he said.
With time, the police realized the enormity of the gang’s activities. “The gang laundered money for the drug and illegal arms trade. They also had other criminal activities but this was their main job. They laundered around 2.4 billion dirhams in drugs money alone,” he said.
According to Al-Moalem, the gang laundered money for hashish and heroin traders in Asia and at the same time also cleaned up the money of Latin American cocaine cartels. He added that the criminals had set up several businesses in the UAE and Honk Kong to clean the money. “These front companies traded in melamine, grains and other businesses. They used the Hong Kong branch of an international bank to transfer the money in addition to some local and international banks in the UAE,” he said.
Giving an idea of the amount of money that would be transferred in one day, Al-Moalem, said that it was an average of $70 million a day. “They would get a percentage of four to eight percent per transaction. Sometimes they would reject transactions of hundreds of thousands of dirhams because they were too small an amount,” he said.
The gang’s masterminds lived a lavish lifestyle, said Al-Moalem. “In 2006, they made net profits of more than 70 million pounds. They threw a huge party in India where they spent more than $11 million on three days of partying. They paid a famous American star $3 million to come and sing,” he said.
After gathering evidence, the Dubai police then informed their counterparts in Europe and other parts of the world. “We worked closely with other forces, especially the British police,” he said. “However, because of some miscommunication, one of the European forces made a move too early to arrest the gang’s affiliates in that country. In less than four hours the masterminds in Dubai destroyed all the evidence in their offices and fled the country,” said Al-Moalem.
Realizing that they did not have enough evidence to arrest them, the police let the gang leave. “We worked very closely with the Central Bank to ensure that none of their assets was frozen in the UAE banks. After that we waited for them to come back. Our instincts were right because the gang thought that Dubai police had no clue about their activities and they felt safe enough to come back in less than a month,” said Al-Moalem.
On Feb. 18 of this year, a huge task force moved in to arrest the gang members. “It was an operation that was timed in such a way that they did not have even seconds to destroy any evidence,” he said. “Forty-eight people were arrested and were charged with money laundering in addition to charges of facilitating and helping drug trafficking. Based on the evidence that we have gathered, police forces in other parts of the world, especially Europe and America, are now able to arrest traffickers and other criminals who cooperated with this gang.”
