Emirates City Forum

Al Barakah chief arrested on bouncing cheque charges

Publish Date: 2009-07-08 15:00:07 Story Code: 17599
The chief executive of the property developer Al Barakah is in custody, and is likely to face charges relating to the signing cheques worth millions of dirhams, which later allegedly bounced.
SIK, whose company was planning what would have been the tallest tower in Ajman, surrendered himself to the Dubai police last Thursday and was officially arrested on Sunday, according to the public prosecutor�s office of the Muraqqabat police station.
�He has been captured on Sunday this week,� said a first sergeant at the public prosecutor�s office. �He said that his name has been blocked and that he can�t leave. He told that his business had [gone] worse and that he wanted to solve everything by the court. And because of that he surrendered himself.�
According to the officer, the charges related to a bounced cheque. �He had one bounced cheque of nearly Dh10m and the case has been sent yesterday to the court,� he said.
The chief executive was being sought by Dubai Police for more than seven months for allegedly bouncing cheques that totalled more than Dh40 million (US$16.33m), according to the Dubai police.
Al Barakah, which launched a dozen projects in Dubai and Ajman from 2007, found itself in difficulty last year when investors tried to sell their holdings on the project, and demanded the company honour its pledge to guarantee a 50 per cent return.
SIK signed agreements with investors promising to buy back their properties after six months with a guaranteed 50 per cent profit on the downpayment. He issued post-dated checks as a guarantee of the buy-back.

© The National 2009. All rights reserved.

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Ajman project 'still just desert'

Publish Date: 2009-07-08 02:00:05 Story Code: 17558

Dubai: Investors in Lake View Towers in Emirates City, Ajman, have filed complaints to both the police and the emirate's regulatory agency regarding the status of the project.
More than 500 investors have paid over Dh120 million so far towards their units in Lake View Towers 1 5, being developed by Lake View Real Estate Developers, and still "all they have to look at is a piece of desert," an investor told Gulf News.
More than 40 complaints have been filed at Al Refaa police station in Dubai and with Ajman's Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Arra), but "no action has been taken," said the investor.
However, a spokesperson for Arra said that the wheels are in motion for a solution.
"The police are doing investigations. Arra has filed the investors' complaints against the developer who has started the registration process to a certain stage. Arra will do its best to protect investors' money and will make sure that the law is transparently applied," the spokesperson said.
Local property chatrooms are full of concerned investors wanting to know what's going to happen with their investments.
Suhail Gani Quraishi, administration manager of Lake View Real Estate, said the developer has registered and it is only the short-term investors who want to wriggle out of the project. "The people who have complained need their money back, that's it. A lot of it was short-term investment," said Qureshi.
Around 90 per cent of the registration process is complete with only some final documents needed to complete it and then construction will start, added Quraishi.
Arra recently set up a dispute committee to deal with such issues.
Two weeks ago, a group of around 20 investors in Frankfurt Residence, also in Ajman, went to Arra en masse to demand updates on their investments. The developer, Casamia Star, had refused to meet the group.
© Gulf News 2009. All rights reserved.