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The Dubai Debt Trap

249 points by Geekette 5y ago

zivkovicp 5y ago
I can't say I'm surprised, but I can't help but feel he would have been much better off if he wasn't so rich. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept him locked up for life to ensure there is no possibility for anyone to contest the property seizures. Corruption at its finest.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  He admits he committed fraud (using DIB funds for the Plantation on a project in Pakistan), so how is this corruption? I'm not fond of the continually extended jail time, but he is a criminal. The story title should really be "The Dubai Financial Fraud Trap".
  - zivkovicp 5y ago
    Oh I agree that he should be jailed for fraud, especially considering he admits to it, no argument from me there. > I'm not fond of the continually extended jail time This is kind of the point, because the bank (and I'm guessing ministry, politicians, etc.) seized assets, ignored or outright altered the terms of contracts, and participates in other shady business, the jail time seems like a convenient (and effective) means of suppressing push-back. The spoils end up in private hands, those that were in charge of the banks, ministries, courts, etc. It is not only Dubai, you can see similar behaviour all over the world. But hey, if you want to play with the big dogs, you might get bit.
  - hackyhacky 5y ago
    Did you read the article? He's already served a sentence well exceeding that of the crime he's alleged to have committed. Now he's in jail at the behest of his creditors.
threatripper 5y ago
Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20220218111600/https://www.economist.com/1843/2021/12/15/the-dubai-debt-trap https://web.archive.org/web/20220218111600/https://www.econo...
- retube 5y ago
  Thanks. Hoes does WBM get the page? Does the economist let it's crawlers through?
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Crawlers are often permitted to get more web visibility. I think the Web Archive also crawls the web as a browser sometimes, so they can't always distinguish between crawlers. That said, with NoScript on I can just read the economist article, no banners or anything.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    I do wonder; at some point, Google said they would penalize websites that show their crawlers something else than real visitors.
  - flerchin 5y ago
    Just disable javascript and the entire article loads on the economist.
retube 5y ago
All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.
- ycombinete 5y ago
  Because almost no one who moves to Dubai for a middle class job will ever experience any of the things you’ve listed except for the heat. What they do experience is earning lots of tax-free money, and a vibrant city life. Obviously those negatives are all present but less of a threat than one might think from the outside. Perhaps that seems like too much of a risk to some people. But to others, who aren’t living in “heaven-on-earth” first world countries it’s an easy gamble to make. (Culturally hyper-conservative is especially hilarious for anyone who has been to a Dubai brunch.)
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Obviously those negatives are all present but less of a threat than one might think from the outside. I doubt anybody who lived in the gulf for at least a year never been a witnness to extremely harsh treatment of debtors firsthand. I myself knew a person who went to a debtor prison over a parking ticket.
  - Retric 5y ago
    The UEA tramples on a lot of middle class people, but most don’t get any press coverage.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      Yes, and not only foreigners. There are plenty of poor Emiratis in fact. This comes as a surprise to a lot of people who never been to UAE. The percentage of uber-rich natives is grossly overestated by the popular image of the country. Nor there are that many really rich expats, unless with businesses outside of UAE, and who only come there to spend. UAE is not a good place to make money in, but it's often a first choice for MNCs to setup in the region, as anywhere else in the region is even worse. Only 10%-15% of the UAE population is somewhat close to American middle income standards.
throw3838 5y ago
- anonexpat 5y ago
  As someone whose father withheld child support payments to turn the screws on my mother, I disagree.
- MattRix 5y ago
  Not seeing how that is similar at all.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Citation needed. My stepson's father rarely paid support. He owes my wife and son tens of thousands of dollars. The best the courts could do was wage garnishment, but then he'd just quit his job and move across state lines.
- mcv 5y ago
  By taking everything you've got and more, locking you up for decades, fraudulently seizing foreign properties, and all without a lawyer, in a language you don't know. I don't doubt the US legal systems has many problems, but I think it's still on a completely different scale than this.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    There have been instances of local police departments making a fucking contest on who could seize the most money on the next highway [1] from people just passing through. In total, it's many dozens of billions of dollars [2] - in 2015 there was more property being seized by police than taken from people by burglars [3] ffs. The scale of "civil forfeiture" by corrupt and/or greedy cops in the US is mind-boggling. [1]: https://eu.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/27/civil-forfeiture-south-carolina-police-property-seizures-taken-exclusive-investigation/2457838002/ https://eu.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/... [2]: https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeiture-rakes-in-billions-each-year-does-not-fight-crime-2/ https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeitu... [3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
JohnGB 5y ago
One of many reasons that I will never enter the UAE. There is no rule of law, and so no protection if anyone decides to charge you for anything. I've read of women being raped and then being charged for reporting it which essentially admits sex outside of marriage, or of foreigners who get driven into by a local and then charged as if they were the ones being reckless. That's not even going into their de facto slavery with foreign construction workers, environmental damage, and sexism.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >There is no rule of law In San Francisco if someone walks into your shop and steals less than $950 worth of goods there's pretty much nothing you can do about it; is that rule of law?
  - Grollicus 5y ago
    Why shouldn't it be? Rule of law basically means laws apply to everyone the same.
    - savant_penguin 5y ago
      The right not no have your stuff stolen doesn't apply to you if you own a store
      - moralestapia 5y ago
        GP said laws not rights. Your rights can be infringed by any person on Earth at any time they please. But then, laws can be invoked to make said person stop and to apply the appropriate punishment/reparations.
      - knownjorbist 5y ago
        It's pretty clear that both you and logicchains are here to concern troll, nothing more.
      - ncallaway 5y ago
baybal2 5y ago
ProTip: Never ever open a credit card in the UAE, or just never deal with anybody on credit here. Cash, cash, cash only.
- draugadrotten 5y ago
  ProTip: "Cornelius undoubtedly committed fraud", according to the article. Never commit fraud in the UAE.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    I'd expand it to never do business in the Middle East. It's just not worth it.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      It's not worth it for you perhaps; for others, international companies, it can be very lucrative to operate in or through Dubai.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      I was studying in Saudi Arabia (at KAUST) and my daughter got kidnapped for two weeks when I refused to comply with some work conditions they were trying to impose on me. Granted, the guys that did this were not arabs, they were two professors from Australia and the US, but still, it was weird how everybody turned their back on this as it seemed like the standard procedure to follow when one does not cooperate. WTF. Never do business in/with the Middle East.
      - RF_Savage 5y ago
        How do some australian dudes not get trouble from their government for participating/organizing a kidnapping to blackmail somebody? The US persons especially.
        moralestapia 5y ago
ur-whale 5y ago
https://archive.is/GKvGU https://archive.is/GKvGU
- flerchin 5y ago
  Disable javascript and the entire article loads on the economist.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Lynx is the best reader for the economist.
    - rahimnathwani 5y ago
      Back in 2016, The Economist used to block access from lynx. You'd get an error like this (unless you spoofed the user agent to be something other than lynx): Error 403 You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that this is a mistake. You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that this is a mistake. Guru Meditation: XID: 84740260 __________________________________________________________________ Varnish cache server
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        Tbh, I was probably running some clone like bobcat.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      I don't love reading long articles in fixed-width fonts.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Then pipeline to a PS/PDF generator. For most modern Web publishing, this is mostly a matter of finding and extracting the <article> block, as well as metadata (title, byline, dateline). html-xml-tools is quite useful for this. I'd created a WaPo extractor that reduced pagesize by about 95%, stripped the nags and paywalls, etc. Endpoint was HTML, but that could just as easily have generated PDF or ePub if I'd wanted.
_hhkg 5y ago
As a Bay Area native who moved to Abu Dhabi / Dubai roughly four years ago, I have a lot of issues with the way the UAE is portrayed across sites like Hacker News and Reddit. A lot of them are in the comments for this story, focusing on all the negatives of the country, structural racism, human rights abuse, etc and we certainly have a right to raise these things (of which I actively fight against here every day). That being said however, this young country does also have many positives to it that go unnoticed by those across the world since they're rarely reported. They may be small, but they are accomplishments nonetheless, such as a couple years ago being the "Year of Tolerance" where the gov't focused on bring inclusivity in their own way to the country, or bringing the Pope to this country on his first ever visit to the Gulf, or even the religious centers that are being built in Abu Dhabi that celebrate Jewish, Muslim and Christian history. For a country hardly 50 years old, it's come a long way. Just this year, a lot of laws such as having children out of wedlock, marijuana / alcohol, not requiring a local partner for business, etc., have all been relaxed and this is just the beginning. They've also introduced a variety of labor laws (though I don't think they're being followed by the owners of these companies, but that's a qualm for another day) I don't want to get across that this country is good or bad, but that it's _complex_ (just like most countries). I do personally believe that the leadership of the country is trying to make a positive impact, though it's usually in ways that aren't reported in the media and... that's all I want put out there, just to bring some nuance to the conversation. Having said all that, going back to the long-form article, I will say only one thing, debt is something that's really scary to have here since AFAIK, it's illegal in Islam, so the credit card system tends to be strangely designed and if I was ever in debt to this country or any of these Arab countries, I'd stay far away from here.
- codechad 5y ago
  You wax poetically about UAE (mostly emotion, little fact), then remind the reader that it is an Islamic dictatorship. Why would any intelligent person ever set foot there? I'd lose over half of my current rights as it stands.
  - lmm 5y ago
    It's easy to think you have a lot of rights until you try to do something unpopular with them. I left the west for somewhere where I have a lot fewer rights on paper, but I feel so much freer now, no longer constantly worrying about what the mob thinks of everything I say. I won't defend the UAE, but the level of freedom you have in actual daily life is surprisingly disconnected from what's written in a constitution or what the government is doing.
bradleyjg 5y ago
Shaibani’s past calls into question Dubai’s claim to be run by the rule of law. He was involved in two of the most notorious episodes in Dubai’s recent history: the kidnappings of the emir’s daughters, Shamsa and Latifa. In August 2000, Shamsa was abducted from the streets of Cambridge, England, not far from the sheikh’s estate in Newmarket. She was drugged and taken to Dubai against her will. During a dispute between the ruler of Dubai and his estranged wife, the English High Court determined in December 2019 that Shaibani was “closely involved” in the “operation to remove” her and, indeed, that he was present when she was seized. She hasn’t been seen in public since. The UK must be addicted to despot money because these things keep on happening and the diplomatic reactions seem non existent.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
A few things I noticed on my trip to Dubai. 1. Almost all of the labour comes from India and Pakistan. The native population is very small. So Dubai is an international city really, and it can't stop being one. The upkeep of everything they built is extremely labour intensive. If the immigrants went away the city would disintegrate back into sand within a few years. 2. The amount of wealth concentrated in such a tiny spot, with no military to protect it, is probably not sustainable. Just judging by the amount of effort that went into protecting castles in Europe. This place will get raided eventually. 3. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy can afford a home with a backyard in Dubai. So if you have one, appreciate it.
- gruez 5y ago
  >2. The amount of wealth concentrated in such a tiny spot, with no military to protect it, is probably not sustainable. Just judging by the amount of effort that went into protecting castles in Europe. This place will get raided eventually. Isn't most of the wealth in stuff like real estate and finance? Those are pretty hard to raid with an army.
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    I would think the invaders would take the city and hold it. I've been to a Mall just outside of Dubai just dedicated to gold and jewellery. That mall alone probably had more wealth than many smaller cities in the world. So there's plenty to loot. This reminded me: Siege of Tyre 332 BC - Alexander the Great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98inDANKtEs&t=290s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98inDANKtEs&t=290s
jacquesm 5y ago
You couldn't pay me to go there. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-har...
- aorth 5y ago
  Me neither: - https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Dubai-Herve-Jaubert/dp/0929915941 https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Dubai-Herve-Jaubert/dp/0929915... - https://historyofyesterday.com/5-disturbing-facts-about-princess-latifas-escape-from-dubai-45730722622d?gi=9edbcfedac1 https://historyofyesterday.com/5-disturbing-facts-about-prin... - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/11/woman-arrested-with-daughter-in-dubai-over-drinking-wine-is-released https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/11/woman-arrest... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/06/pegasus-dubai-princess-haya-court-ruling/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/06/pegasus... And on and on...
logicchains 5y ago
For everyone talking about the poor South Asian migrant workers in slave-like conditions there, note that most such workers would much rather be working in developed places like the US or Europe, but the immigration policies of those countries deny them that chance. Dubai is one of the few places in the region (and the world) that makes it very easy for anyone to come there and work, regardless of their race or nationality. I.e. those workers wouldn't be slaving away there if western countries had more liberal immigration policies.
- bitcharmer 5y ago
  - feupan 5y ago
    Well… it’s not like they didn’t fuck with a lot of these countries one way or another.
  - dang 5y ago
    You can't post slurs or do nationalistic flamewar on HN. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- thematrixturtle 5y ago
  This is an awfully positive spin on things. Dubai does not encourage actual immigration, in fact it is virtually impossible to become a citizen. What they do have, and at massive scale, is a system where local companies can bring in what is effectively indentured labor, which will be immediately kicked out once their job is done.
noasaservice 5y ago
Seriously, anywhere in the Middle East is a "NO GO". Their rights are non-existent. The laws are draconian and arbitrary. And if you're a woman, you're effectively a 2nd class citizen. And good luck if you're raped as a woman (shocker! sex out of wedlock, so youre a criminal). Sure, that can be construed as anti-Arab. I don't particularly care. The laws (or lack thereof), the slavery, treatment of women - all of these tell me what I need to know. And this is what passes as "Islamic" countries. Shitholes indeed.
ezconnect 5y ago
During the 2007 financial crisis Dubai finance minister was always on radio and news network saying if they do default the banks can scrape the roads, bridge and building and bring it home with them since that is the collateral of the debt.
tristor 5y ago
I don't think this justifies his treatment, but the article starts off by essentially saying this man did nothing wrong and was forced into signing a confession without a lawyer present in a language he can't understand. It's not until you get more than a third of the way into the article that they point out he was convicted in a civil case brought by the same complainant in British courts of committing financial fraud against the Dubai bank. His treatment is unacceptable, the sentence is outrageous (and counterproductive), but fundamentally this is why you don't get into business with and especially don't defraud petty dictators in unstable regions of the world. If this had been in his place of birth, he would have been murdered rather than imprisoned, and I imagine he should be well aware of this given his upbringing and career history.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  "he was convicted in british courts" is exactly the wrong kind of reasoning here. Sure, this guy probably did it, but for every person who probably did it there are likely 9 or even 99 innocent people who spend months rotting in jail and being abused - or in the US, dying in jail - awaiting a fair trial because we tolerate violations of law and mistreatment of prisoners. "he would have been murdered rather than imprisoned" is also not especially comforting considering just how badly one can be scarred by imprisonment, interrogation, etc.
  - tristor 5y ago
    To be clear, I don't think this is okay. My comment is more pointing out that the article goes out of its way to act as if he's innocent only to later reveal he was actually convicted of the crime by a more trustworthy entity. It's a criticism of the article, not a justification of the treatment of this individual. It's clear that debtor's prison, en total, is unethical. It's also illegal in most of the Western world. And for cases where someone is imprisoned for any crime, the sentence should match the crime, and the treatment within prison should be humane. My latter commentary is about the risk factors that this person knowingly took on doing business in that region. I personally, having traveled extensively, would never engage in business in the Middle East because I understand the nebulous way debt is treated in the region. Usury is illegal under Islamic law, and generally speaking debt is only acceptable in the context of direct personal relationships, which means any dispute about it is taken as a personal insult. Taking on a debt from the finance minister and member of the royal family of a theocratic dictatorship is not a good life decision.
mannanj 5y ago
TLDR; many countries have it bad. The USA does still have the highest incarceration /capital. Don't forget that.
victor106 5y ago
India has a similar law. You will be detained from leaving the country even if you are not the principal borrower and you've just stood as a guarantor for someone else's loan the bank can issue a lookout circular without even approaching a court. One of my offshore resources was arrested at the airport[1] even though he was not the pricipal borrower of the loan. The funny thing about these incidents is that, all these countries want to have startup hubs, all the while forgetting that the very definition of a startup means risk taking where 9 out 10 companies go bankrupt. One of the reasons I still think the west (UK, EU, US) are still some of the best countries to have a thriving business environment. You can be assured (at least a vast majority of the time) that no crazy laws like these would be enacted that would encroach on fundamental rights of a citizen over a civil issue. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/40735-look-out-circulars-issued-against-foreigners-from-jan-2018-to-dec-2020-mha/articleshow/80653350.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...
- stevie11111 5y ago
  The problem is this guy raised money for a project in Dubai and used it for a project in Pakistan. If you fundraised for a startup building robots in the US and instead used the money to buy real estate in Canada, you would be convicted of fraud as well wherever you are.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
1024core 5y ago
Halfway down the article you find: > Cornelius undoubtedly committed fraud. ... He did, however, admit that he used money for riskier endeavours than those for which it was lent. The bank provided credit for short-term needs, but it was instead used to fund unauthorised longer-term projects such as the Pakistan refinery and investments relating to the Plantation. I am sorry, but play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  What surprises me is: 1) "Three plain-clothes policemen arrested Cornelius as he left the airport." So, if he hadn't left the airport, he would have been safe? 2) "The bank convinced an English court to hand over all three of Cornelius’s properties in London" Given his denial of a lawyer etc I'm surprised that an English court agreed to carry on without him. Where are the requests to allow him to participate?
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
dandare 5y ago
Dictatorships are not holiday destinations or places for business - and this applies tenfold to UAE and Saudi Arabia. There has been plenty of warning over the years, enter these countries at your own risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)#Arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)#Arres... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Gali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Gali
bitcharmer 5y ago
Wait a second, just a few hours ago these comments were made by this user: [redacted] Now all the down-voted ones are supposedly by: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_hhkg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_hhkg @dang, care to explain what transpired here? Are you protecting someone's account from down-votes?
- dang 5y ago
  When people email us with privacy concerns, we try to take care of them. This happens every day. We try not to delete posts that got replies, because doing so would be unfair to the other commenters in the thread. At the same time, we don't want anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN, so we help people who ask for help. We just try to do it with more precise tools than wholesale deletion. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
somenewaccount1 5y ago
Garbage journalism. Starts off by implying he's innocent, half way down you learn he did in fact defraud the bank to the tune of $350 million of a $500M loan, and done so with fabricated invoices. This was not a misunderstanding. Why should I care if a spoiled white colonialist from Africa, already obscenely wealthy, spends his life in jail for defrauding a bank for $350M? Imho, this was actually justice served to a white collar criminal, for once.
kingcharles 5y ago
> Some prisoners don’t even have pillows LOL. I just did eight years at two facilities in the USA, neither of which allowed pillows. Try going to sleep tonight without a pillow. It sucks. > The temperature in the cells is kept low. This is par for the course in most jails and prisons. They make an excuse that it "keeps down germs". > The air conditioning runs noisily and ceaselessly Same > Strip lights are left on 24 hours a day. I had five years in cells with 24/7 lighting > Hanging up anything to dim the brightness is treated as a punishable offence Same in every jail and prison > Taps drip. Is there a prison well-maintain enough anywhere in the world where all the mechanicals actually work?! > There is no toilet paper, so prisoners have to use a hose. It is common in the Middle-East to wash your undercarriage with a showerhead. > Occasionally, they are allowed to exercise for 45 minutes in a small, concrete yard. Better than I had in the USA. I never saw the sun for eight years. > In Dubai, inmates have to buy everything, including soap and detergent for cleaning the cells, as well as newspapers and phone calls. They were allowed newspapers.. this is better than any place I was at which had total news blackouts. > A small range of food items can be bought from outside the prison, by placing an order through the police kitchen. Cornelius buys a hamburger twice a week and pizza on Thursdays. Nice! Most jails don't have hot food ordering, but it is becoming more common as there is good money to be made. > Martin Lonergan, who spent nine months in the cell next to Cornelius’s in 2019-20 after getting caught up in a separate business dispute, carried out an informal survey among the prisoners. He reckons inmates lucky enough to have money on their cards spend an average of around 150 dirhams a week, or $40. Cheap! The jails I was in.. if you didn't max out the $100 a week limit you were considered a loser. The goal for most people was to find one of these "losers" and buy his remaining credit off him (for say, a 25% surcharge) so you could buy $200-300 of commissary a week. > Prisoners report that they rarely see the jailers. Every night at 9pm cells are locked and the phone line to the guards is switched off. If an inmate has a problem, there’s no way to get assistance. Sometimes prisoners can be heard screaming for help. Same in the Cook County Jail in Illinois. If you have a heart attack at night, good luck! They'll find your body the next day. > Medical care is almost non-existent: a single doctor covers all the inmates. Under the rota system prisoners may be given an appointment six months down the line. This seems quick for jail medical care. > That didn’t stop covid from running rampant through the overcrowded prison. His block is reportedly being used as a dumping ground for anyone who might be infected. LOL. When I was in the CCJ, the NYT declared it to be the epicenter of the entire COVID pandemic. > A person close to Cornelius says he accepts that he “made mistakes”, but that he’d been assured by cch that he could borrow money to invest if he submitted “certain invoices in a certain way”. Though Cornelius never dealt directly with dib, he has said he was led to understand that the bank was “supportive” of this chicanery. Yeah, if you don't have it in writing, you're on the hook. My personal manager at PayPal was very supportive of me running a private TV torrent tracker, but if I'd had to subpoena him to court I'm sure he would have told a very different story :D > In most Western countries, debt is considered a civil matter. Charles Dickens’s father was sent to a debtors’ prison and Dickens’s depictions of these prisons’ horrific conditions in his novels bolstered a campaign that led to their eventual abolition in Britain in 1869. The uae, by contrast, still treats debt as a crime. It is still a crime in the USA. I met many people in jail incarcerated for debt. Legally you can't be incarcerated for debt, but there is a way around it that courts in the USA use. If the judge orders you to repay a sum of money and you fail to do it on time, then you have disobeyed the judge and committed contempt of court and are jailed for that, not the debt. Easy!
2143 5y ago
Dubai is not perfect. But it's not _that_ bad. And I think they're trying to be more welcoming to foreigners and everybody else and ironing out other issues. But it'll take time, and won't happen overnight. Is the situation in Dubai getting worse over time, or is it getting better? (btw, I'm just talking about Dubai and UAE in general. For other countries in the region all bets are off; I have no idea what goes on in places like Yemen, for instance). I guess your perspective on UAE would depend on where you come from. If you're from developed countries like, for example, Norway, Finland, and perhaps even USA, Dubai is going to look worse off. But plenty of people in Dubai are from countries even worse. So for them, Dubai is definitely an upgrade.
fennecfoxy 5y ago
I would love to visit the middle-east (especially Egypt, so many cool ruins!) but as a gay man I refuse to support any country that persecutes people, whether it's women or minorities or anybody really. Stoning, hanging and imprisoning people like me is a surefire way to not get my tourism dollars. Unfortunately, not many people feel the same way.

249 points by Geekette 5y ago

I can't say I'm surprised, but I can't help but feel he would have been much better off if he wasn't so rich. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept him locked up for life to ensure there is no possibility for anyone to contest the property seizures. Corruption at its finest.

alistairSH 5y ago
He admits he committed fraud (using DIB funds for the Plantation on a project in Pakistan), so how is this corruption? I'm not fond of the continually extended jail time, but he is a criminal. The story title should really be "The Dubai Financial Fraud Trap".
- zivkovicp 5y ago
  Oh I agree that he should be jailed for fraud, especially considering he admits to it, no argument from me there. > I'm not fond of the continually extended jail time This is kind of the point, because the bank (and I'm guessing ministry, politicians, etc.) seized assets, ignored or outright altered the terms of contracts, and participates in other shady business, the jail time seems like a convenient (and effective) means of suppressing push-back. The spoils end up in private hands, those that were in charge of the banks, ministries, courts, etc. It is not only Dubai, you can see similar behaviour all over the world. But hey, if you want to play with the big dogs, you might get bit.
- hackyhacky 5y ago
  Did you read the article? He's already served a sentence well exceeding that of the crime he's alleged to have committed. Now he's in jail at the behest of his creditors.

threatripper 5y ago

Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20220218111600/https://www.economist.com/1843/2021/12/15/the-dubai-debt-trap https://web.archive.org/web/20220218111600/https://www.econo...

retube 5y ago
Thanks. Hoes does WBM get the page? Does the economist let it's crawlers through?
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Crawlers are often permitted to get more web visibility. I think the Web Archive also crawls the web as a browser sometimes, so they can't always distinguish between crawlers. That said, with NoScript on I can just read the economist article, no banners or anything.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I do wonder; at some point, Google said they would penalize websites that show their crawlers something else than real visitors.
- flerchin 5y ago
  Just disable javascript and the entire article loads on the economist.

retube 5y ago

All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

ycombinete 5y ago
Because almost no one who moves to Dubai for a middle class job will ever experience any of the things you’ve listed except for the heat. What they do experience is earning lots of tax-free money, and a vibrant city life. Obviously those negatives are all present but less of a threat than one might think from the outside. Perhaps that seems like too much of a risk to some people. But to others, who aren’t living in “heaven-on-earth” first world countries it’s an easy gamble to make. (Culturally hyper-conservative is especially hilarious for anyone who has been to a Dubai brunch.)
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Obviously those negatives are all present but less of a threat than one might think from the outside. I doubt anybody who lived in the gulf for at least a year never been a witnness to extremely harsh treatment of debtors firsthand. I myself knew a person who went to a debtor prison over a parking ticket.
- Retric 5y ago
  The UEA tramples on a lot of middle class people, but most don’t get any press coverage.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    Yes, and not only foreigners. There are plenty of poor Emiratis in fact. This comes as a surprise to a lot of people who never been to UAE. The percentage of uber-rich natives is grossly overestated by the popular image of the country. Nor there are that many really rich expats, unless with businesses outside of UAE, and who only come there to spend. UAE is not a good place to make money in, but it's often a first choice for MNCs to setup in the region, as anywhere else in the region is even worse. Only 10%-15% of the UAE population is somewhat close to American middle income standards.

throw3838 5y ago

anonexpat 5y ago
As someone whose father withheld child support payments to turn the screws on my mother, I disagree.
MattRix 5y ago
Not seeing how that is similar at all.
alistairSH 5y ago
Citation needed. My stepson's father rarely paid support. He owes my wife and son tens of thousands of dollars. The best the courts could do was wage garnishment, but then he'd just quit his job and move across state lines.
mcv 5y ago
By taking everything you've got and more, locking you up for decades, fraudulently seizing foreign properties, and all without a lawyer, in a language you don't know. I don't doubt the US legal systems has many problems, but I think it's still on a completely different scale than this.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  There have been instances of local police departments making a fucking contest on who could seize the most money on the next highway [1] from people just passing through. In total, it's many dozens of billions of dollars [2] - in 2015 there was more property being seized by police than taken from people by burglars [3] ffs. The scale of "civil forfeiture" by corrupt and/or greedy cops in the US is mind-boggling. [1]: https://eu.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/27/civil-forfeiture-south-carolina-police-property-seizures-taken-exclusive-investigation/2457838002/ https://eu.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/... [2]: https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeiture-rakes-in-billions-each-year-does-not-fight-crime-2/ https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeitu... [3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

JohnGB 5y ago

One of many reasons that I will never enter the UAE. There is no rule of law, and so no protection if anyone decides to charge you for anything. I've read of women being raped and then being charged for reporting it which essentially admits sex outside of marriage, or of foreigners who get driven into by a local and then charged as if they were the ones being reckless. That's not even going into their de facto slavery with foreign construction workers, environmental damage, and sexism.

logicchains 5y ago
>There is no rule of law In San Francisco if someone walks into your shop and steals less than $950 worth of goods there's pretty much nothing you can do about it; is that rule of law?
- Grollicus 5y ago
  Why shouldn't it be? Rule of law basically means laws apply to everyone the same.
  - savant_penguin 5y ago
    The right not no have your stuff stolen doesn't apply to you if you own a store
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      GP said laws not rights. Your rights can be infringed by any person on Earth at any time they please. But then, laws can be invoked to make said person stop and to apply the appropriate punishment/reparations.
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      It's pretty clear that both you and logicchains are here to concern troll, nothing more.
    - ncallaway 5y ago

baybal2 5y ago

ProTip: Never ever open a credit card in the UAE, or just never deal with anybody on credit here. Cash, cash, cash only.

draugadrotten 5y ago
ProTip: "Cornelius undoubtedly committed fraud", according to the article. Never commit fraud in the UAE.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  I'd expand it to never do business in the Middle East. It's just not worth it.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    It's not worth it for you perhaps; for others, international companies, it can be very lucrative to operate in or through Dubai.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    I was studying in Saudi Arabia (at KAUST) and my daughter got kidnapped for two weeks when I refused to comply with some work conditions they were trying to impose on me. Granted, the guys that did this were not arabs, they were two professors from Australia and the US, but still, it was weird how everybody turned their back on this as it seemed like the standard procedure to follow when one does not cooperate. WTF. Never do business in/with the Middle East.
    - RF_Savage 5y ago
      How do some australian dudes not get trouble from their government for participating/organizing a kidnapping to blackmail somebody? The US persons especially.
      - moralestapia 5y ago

ur-whale 5y ago

https://archive.is/GKvGU https://archive.is/GKvGU

flerchin 5y ago
Disable javascript and the entire article loads on the economist.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Lynx is the best reader for the economist.
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    Back in 2016, The Economist used to block access from lynx. You'd get an error like this (unless you spoofed the user agent to be something other than lynx): Error 403 You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that this is a mistake. You are banned from this site. Please contact via a different client configuration if you believe that this is a mistake. Guru Meditation: XID: 84740260 __________________________________________________________________ Varnish cache server
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Tbh, I was probably running some clone like bobcat.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    I don't love reading long articles in fixed-width fonts.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Then pipeline to a PS/PDF generator. For most modern Web publishing, this is mostly a matter of finding and extracting the <article> block, as well as metadata (title, byline, dateline). html-xml-tools is quite useful for this. I'd created a WaPo extractor that reduced pagesize by about 95%, stripped the nags and paywalls, etc. Endpoint was HTML, but that could just as easily have generated PDF or ePub if I'd wanted.

_hhkg 5y ago

As a Bay Area native who moved to Abu Dhabi / Dubai roughly four years ago, I have a lot of issues with the way the UAE is portrayed across sites like Hacker News and Reddit. A lot of them are in the comments for this story, focusing on all the negatives of the country, structural racism, human rights abuse, etc and we certainly have a right to raise these things (of which I actively fight against here every day). That being said however, this young country does also have many positives to it that go unnoticed by those across the world since they're rarely reported. They may be small, but they are accomplishments nonetheless, such as a couple years ago being the "Year of Tolerance" where the gov't focused on bring inclusivity in their own way to the country, or bringing the Pope to this country on his first ever visit to the Gulf, or even the religious centers that are being built in Abu Dhabi that celebrate Jewish, Muslim and Christian history. For a country hardly 50 years old, it's come a long way. Just this year, a lot of laws such as having children out of wedlock, marijuana / alcohol, not requiring a local partner for business, etc., have all been relaxed and this is just the beginning. They've also introduced a variety of labor laws (though I don't think they're being followed by the owners of these companies, but that's a qualm for another day) I don't want to get across that this country is good or bad, but that it's _complex_ (just like most countries). I do personally believe that the leadership of the country is trying to make a positive impact, though it's usually in ways that aren't reported in the media and... that's all I want put out there, just to bring some nuance to the conversation. Having said all that, going back to the long-form article, I will say only one thing, debt is something that's really scary to have here since AFAIK, it's illegal in Islam, so the credit card system tends to be strangely designed and if I was ever in debt to this country or any of these Arab countries, I'd stay far away from here.

codechad 5y ago
You wax poetically about UAE (mostly emotion, little fact), then remind the reader that it is an Islamic dictatorship. Why would any intelligent person ever set foot there? I'd lose over half of my current rights as it stands.
- lmm 5y ago
  It's easy to think you have a lot of rights until you try to do something unpopular with them. I left the west for somewhere where I have a lot fewer rights on paper, but I feel so much freer now, no longer constantly worrying about what the mob thinks of everything I say. I won't defend the UAE, but the level of freedom you have in actual daily life is surprisingly disconnected from what's written in a constitution or what the government is doing.

bradleyjg 5y ago

Shaibani’s past calls into question Dubai’s claim to be run by the rule of law. He was involved in two of the most notorious episodes in Dubai’s recent history: the kidnappings of the emir’s daughters, Shamsa and Latifa. In August 2000, Shamsa was abducted from the streets of Cambridge, England, not far from the sheikh’s estate in Newmarket. She was drugged and taken to Dubai against her will. During a dispute between the ruler of Dubai and his estranged wife, the English High Court determined in December 2019 that Shaibani was “closely involved” in the “operation to remove” her and, indeed, that he was present when she was seized. She hasn’t been seen in public since. The UK must be addicted to despot money because these things keep on happening and the diplomatic reactions seem non existent.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

A few things I noticed on my trip to Dubai. 1. Almost all of the labour comes from India and Pakistan. The native population is very small. So Dubai is an international city really, and it can't stop being one. The upkeep of everything they built is extremely labour intensive. If the immigrants went away the city would disintegrate back into sand within a few years. 2. The amount of wealth concentrated in such a tiny spot, with no military to protect it, is probably not sustainable. Just judging by the amount of effort that went into protecting castles in Europe. This place will get raided eventually. 3. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy can afford a home with a backyard in Dubai. So if you have one, appreciate it.

gruez 5y ago
>2. The amount of wealth concentrated in such a tiny spot, with no military to protect it, is probably not sustainable. Just judging by the amount of effort that went into protecting castles in Europe. This place will get raided eventually. Isn't most of the wealth in stuff like real estate and finance? Those are pretty hard to raid with an army.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  I would think the invaders would take the city and hold it. I've been to a Mall just outside of Dubai just dedicated to gold and jewellery. That mall alone probably had more wealth than many smaller cities in the world. So there's plenty to loot. This reminded me: Siege of Tyre 332 BC - Alexander the Great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98inDANKtEs&t=290s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98inDANKtEs&t=290s

jacquesm 5y ago

You couldn't pay me to go there. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-har...

aorth 5y ago
Me neither: - https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Dubai-Herve-Jaubert/dp/0929915941 https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Dubai-Herve-Jaubert/dp/0929915... - https://historyofyesterday.com/5-disturbing-facts-about-princess-latifas-escape-from-dubai-45730722622d?gi=9edbcfedac1 https://historyofyesterday.com/5-disturbing-facts-about-prin... - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/11/woman-arrested-with-daughter-in-dubai-over-drinking-wine-is-released https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/aug/11/woman-arrest... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/06/pegasus-dubai-princess-haya-court-ruling/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/06/pegasus... And on and on...

logicchains 5y ago

For everyone talking about the poor South Asian migrant workers in slave-like conditions there, note that most such workers would much rather be working in developed places like the US or Europe, but the immigration policies of those countries deny them that chance. Dubai is one of the few places in the region (and the world) that makes it very easy for anyone to come there and work, regardless of their race or nationality. I.e. those workers wouldn't be slaving away there if western countries had more liberal immigration policies.

bitcharmer 5y ago
- feupan 5y ago
  Well… it’s not like they didn’t fuck with a lot of these countries one way or another.
- dang 5y ago
  You can't post slurs or do nationalistic flamewar on HN. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
thematrixturtle 5y ago
This is an awfully positive spin on things. Dubai does not encourage actual immigration, in fact it is virtually impossible to become a citizen. What they do have, and at massive scale, is a system where local companies can bring in what is effectively indentured labor, which will be immediately kicked out once their job is done.

noasaservice 5y ago

Seriously, anywhere in the Middle East is a "NO GO". Their rights are non-existent. The laws are draconian and arbitrary. And if you're a woman, you're effectively a 2nd class citizen. And good luck if you're raped as a woman (shocker! sex out of wedlock, so youre a criminal). Sure, that can be construed as anti-Arab. I don't particularly care. The laws (or lack thereof), the slavery, treatment of women - all of these tell me what I need to know. And this is what passes as "Islamic" countries. Shitholes indeed.

ezconnect 5y ago

During the 2007 financial crisis Dubai finance minister was always on radio and news network saying if they do default the banks can scrape the roads, bridge and building and bring it home with them since that is the collateral of the debt.

tristor 5y ago

I don't think this justifies his treatment, but the article starts off by essentially saying this man did nothing wrong and was forced into signing a confession without a lawyer present in a language he can't understand. It's not until you get more than a third of the way into the article that they point out he was convicted in a civil case brought by the same complainant in British courts of committing financial fraud against the Dubai bank. His treatment is unacceptable, the sentence is outrageous (and counterproductive), but fundamentally this is why you don't get into business with and especially don't defraud petty dictators in unstable regions of the world. If this had been in his place of birth, he would have been murdered rather than imprisoned, and I imagine he should be well aware of this given his upbringing and career history.

kevingadd 5y ago
"he was convicted in british courts" is exactly the wrong kind of reasoning here. Sure, this guy probably did it, but for every person who probably did it there are likely 9 or even 99 innocent people who spend months rotting in jail and being abused - or in the US, dying in jail - awaiting a fair trial because we tolerate violations of law and mistreatment of prisoners. "he would have been murdered rather than imprisoned" is also not especially comforting considering just how badly one can be scarred by imprisonment, interrogation, etc.
- tristor 5y ago
  To be clear, I don't think this is okay. My comment is more pointing out that the article goes out of its way to act as if he's innocent only to later reveal he was actually convicted of the crime by a more trustworthy entity. It's a criticism of the article, not a justification of the treatment of this individual. It's clear that debtor's prison, en total, is unethical. It's also illegal in most of the Western world. And for cases where someone is imprisoned for any crime, the sentence should match the crime, and the treatment within prison should be humane. My latter commentary is about the risk factors that this person knowingly took on doing business in that region. I personally, having traveled extensively, would never engage in business in the Middle East because I understand the nebulous way debt is treated in the region. Usury is illegal under Islamic law, and generally speaking debt is only acceptable in the context of direct personal relationships, which means any dispute about it is taken as a personal insult. Taking on a debt from the finance minister and member of the royal family of a theocratic dictatorship is not a good life decision.

mannanj 5y ago

TLDR; many countries have it bad. The USA does still have the highest incarceration /capital. Don't forget that.

victor106 5y ago

India has a similar law. You will be detained from leaving the country even if you are not the principal borrower and you've just stood as a guarantor for someone else's loan the bank can issue a lookout circular without even approaching a court. One of my offshore resources was arrested at the airport[1] even though he was not the pricipal borrower of the loan. The funny thing about these incidents is that, all these countries want to have startup hubs, all the while forgetting that the very definition of a startup means risk taking where 9 out 10 companies go bankrupt. One of the reasons I still think the west (UK, EU, US) are still some of the best countries to have a thriving business environment. You can be assured (at least a vast majority of the time) that no crazy laws like these would be enacted that would encroach on fundamental rights of a citizen over a civil issue. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/40735-look-out-circulars-issued-against-foreigners-from-jan-2018-to-dec-2020-mha/articleshow/80653350.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-natio...

stevie11111 5y ago
The problem is this guy raised money for a project in Dubai and used it for a project in Pakistan. If you fundraised for a startup building robots in the US and instead used the money to buy real estate in Canada, you would be convicted of fraud as well wherever you are.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

1024core 5y ago

Halfway down the article you find: > Cornelius undoubtedly committed fraud. ... He did, however, admit that he used money for riskier endeavours than those for which it was lent. The bank provided credit for short-term needs, but it was instead used to fund unauthorised longer-term projects such as the Pakistan refinery and investments relating to the Plantation. I am sorry, but play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Chris2048 5y ago
What surprises me is: 1) "Three plain-clothes policemen arrested Cornelius as he left the airport." So, if he hadn't left the airport, he would have been safe? 2) "The bank convinced an English court to hand over all three of Cornelius’s properties in London" Given his denial of a lawyer etc I'm surprised that an English court agreed to carry on without him. Where are the requests to allow him to participate?

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

dandare 5y ago

Dictatorships are not holiday destinations or places for business - and this applies tenfold to UAE and Saudi Arabia. There has been plenty of warning over the years, enter these countries at your own risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)#Arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sampson_(author)#Arres... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Gali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Gali

bitcharmer 5y ago

Wait a second, just a few hours ago these comments were made by this user: [redacted] Now all the down-voted ones are supposedly by: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_hhkg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=_hhkg @dang, care to explain what transpired here? Are you protecting someone's account from down-votes?

dang 5y ago
When people email us with privacy concerns, we try to take care of them. This happens every day. We try not to delete posts that got replies, because doing so would be unfair to the other commenters in the thread. At the same time, we don't want anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN, so we help people who ask for help. We just try to do it with more precise tools than wholesale deletion. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

somenewaccount1 5y ago

Garbage journalism. Starts off by implying he's innocent, half way down you learn he did in fact defraud the bank to the tune of $350 million of a $500M loan, and done so with fabricated invoices. This was not a misunderstanding. Why should I care if a spoiled white colonialist from Africa, already obscenely wealthy, spends his life in jail for defrauding a bank for $350M? Imho, this was actually justice served to a white collar criminal, for once.

kingcharles 5y ago

> Some prisoners don’t even have pillows LOL. I just did eight years at two facilities in the USA, neither of which allowed pillows. Try going to sleep tonight without a pillow. It sucks. > The temperature in the cells is kept low. This is par for the course in most jails and prisons. They make an excuse that it "keeps down germs". > The air conditioning runs noisily and ceaselessly Same > Strip lights are left on 24 hours a day. I had five years in cells with 24/7 lighting > Hanging up anything to dim the brightness is treated as a punishable offence Same in every jail and prison > Taps drip. Is there a prison well-maintain enough anywhere in the world where all the mechanicals actually work?! > There is no toilet paper, so prisoners have to use a hose. It is common in the Middle-East to wash your undercarriage with a showerhead. > Occasionally, they are allowed to exercise for 45 minutes in a small, concrete yard. Better than I had in the USA. I never saw the sun for eight years. > In Dubai, inmates have to buy everything, including soap and detergent for cleaning the cells, as well as newspapers and phone calls. They were allowed newspapers.. this is better than any place I was at which had total news blackouts. > A small range of food items can be bought from outside the prison, by placing an order through the police kitchen. Cornelius buys a hamburger twice a week and pizza on Thursdays. Nice! Most jails don't have hot food ordering, but it is becoming more common as there is good money to be made. > Martin Lonergan, who spent nine months in the cell next to Cornelius’s in 2019-20 after getting caught up in a separate business dispute, carried out an informal survey among the prisoners. He reckons inmates lucky enough to have money on their cards spend an average of around 150 dirhams a week, or $40. Cheap! The jails I was in.. if you didn't max out the $100 a week limit you were considered a loser. The goal for most people was to find one of these "losers" and buy his remaining credit off him (for say, a 25% surcharge) so you could buy $200-300 of commissary a week. > Prisoners report that they rarely see the jailers. Every night at 9pm cells are locked and the phone line to the guards is switched off. If an inmate has a problem, there’s no way to get assistance. Sometimes prisoners can be heard screaming for help. Same in the Cook County Jail in Illinois. If you have a heart attack at night, good luck! They'll find your body the next day. > Medical care is almost non-existent: a single doctor covers all the inmates. Under the rota system prisoners may be given an appointment six months down the line. This seems quick for jail medical care. > That didn’t stop covid from running rampant through the overcrowded prison. His block is reportedly being used as a dumping ground for anyone who might be infected. LOL. When I was in the CCJ, the NYT declared it to be the epicenter of the entire COVID pandemic. > A person close to Cornelius says he accepts that he “made mistakes”, but that he’d been assured by cch that he could borrow money to invest if he submitted “certain invoices in a certain way”. Though Cornelius never dealt directly with dib, he has said he was led to understand that the bank was “supportive” of this chicanery. Yeah, if you don't have it in writing, you're on the hook. My personal manager at PayPal was very supportive of me running a private TV torrent tracker, but if I'd had to subpoena him to court I'm sure he would have told a very different story :D > In most Western countries, debt is considered a civil matter. Charles Dickens’s father was sent to a debtors’ prison and Dickens’s depictions of these prisons’ horrific conditions in his novels bolstered a campaign that led to their eventual abolition in Britain in 1869. The uae, by contrast, still treats debt as a crime. It is still a crime in the USA. I met many people in jail incarcerated for debt. Legally you can't be incarcerated for debt, but there is a way around it that courts in the USA use. If the judge orders you to repay a sum of money and you fail to do it on time, then you have disobeyed the judge and committed contempt of court and are jailed for that, not the debt. Easy!

2143 5y ago

Dubai is not perfect. But it's not _that_ bad. And I think they're trying to be more welcoming to foreigners and everybody else and ironing out other issues. But it'll take time, and won't happen overnight. Is the situation in Dubai getting worse over time, or is it getting better? (btw, I'm just talking about Dubai and UAE in general. For other countries in the region all bets are off; I have no idea what goes on in places like Yemen, for instance). I guess your perspective on UAE would depend on where you come from. If you're from developed countries like, for example, Norway, Finland, and perhaps even USA, Dubai is going to look worse off. But plenty of people in Dubai are from countries even worse. So for them, Dubai is definitely an upgrade.

fennecfoxy 5y ago

I would love to visit the middle-east (especially Egypt, so many cool ruins!) but as a gay man I refuse to support any country that persecutes people, whether it's women or minorities or anybody really. Stoning, hanging and imprisoning people like me is a surefire way to not get my tourism dollars. Unfortunately, not many people feel the same way.