DUBAI, 5 November 2007 — The Sharjah Appeals Court has upheld a lower court’s verdict to sentence seven men to five years in prison for money laundering in what is termed as one of the biggest such cases in the UAE.
The court ordered the confiscation of all their property in Sharjah. The gang members include two Britons, a Belgian, an Emirati, a Turk, some Pakistanis and a Dutch citizen.
The men are part of a 19-member gang that was arrested in an operation known as “Octopus” by both Sharjah and Dubai police. They were arrested in 2006 after trying to smuggle 2.5 tons of hashish from Pakistan to Holland.
The two masterminds of the gang have already been sentenced to life imprisonment by an Abu Dhabi Court. The same court sentenced the others to 10 years in jail for drug trafficking.
According to court records, the police received a tip-off that the gang was planning to smuggle the narcotics in containers of 90,000 towels from Pakistan to Holland, through some of their assistants in Pakistan. The drug route was from Faisalabad to Multan in Pakistan where they were repackaged in cartons and then sent to Karachi where a member of the gang received the quantities and put the consignment in a container. The suspect completed the shipment procedures with the Pakistani Customs in Karachi and on Jan. 3 the consignment left Karachi for Sri Lanka where the cargo was shipped on another vessel to Southampton in Britain and from there to Antwerp and finally to its destination in Holland.
The police in the UAE worked closely with the security authorities of the concerned countries and the shipment was closely monitored. On Jan. 25 the Belgian authorities seized the narcotics and left only one kilogram in the container, installing a monitoring device to track the container. On Jan. 30, the gang completed customs clearance for the cargo in Antwerp and loaded it on a truck which was under surveillance by Belgian police. Before reaching the Dutch border, the Belgian police moved in and arrested the gang. The cargo was supposed to be shipped to a private company belonging to a member of the gang in Holland.
As a result of this operation, one of the biggest drug dealers in Europe was arrested. The criminal who is a Dutch citizen will now serve 15 years in UAE jails. The suspects in the cases were Amir Azam, a British national of Asian origin, who owned two car showrooms in Sharjah and Dubai. The police had named him as the mastermind and the main financier of the operation.
Another Pakistani, Shahbaz Khan, was identified as the other major partner. Khan had been named in previous drug-trafficking cases, but he was never convicted. He apparently led a lavish lifestyle staying in luxurious hotels in Sharjah. He owned a general trading company, in addition to a money exchange company in Dubai, and a hotel in Sharjah.
The third suspect, also a Pakistani national, owns a trading company and his role was confined to supervising the shipping of the cargo from Pakistan to Europe.
One of the suspects was a Pakistani Customs officer at a Pakistani port. He had facilitated the clearance of the cargo with the help of other officers for the amount of 200,000 dirhams.
