Dh343,000 stolen from safe, thief flees UAE

A Pakistani salesman stole Dh343,000 from the safe of his employer using a spare key before fleeing the UAE a couple of hours later, the Dubai Criminal Court heard.

The employer noticed the money and the passport of salesman, AR, 28 were missing from the office safe only in the afternoon next day.

The 58-year-old Pakistani employer MY did not suspect anything about the absence of the salesman AR on August 9.

“In the afternoon at around 4pm, I tried to open the safe box but there was something wrong. I asked the other worker DM to bring a locksmith. The locksmith removed broken part of a key that was stuck inside the lock. Then I opened the safe with the key and was shocked not to find the Dh343,000 that I had kept the day before. Checking the passports of the staff in the safe, I discovered that AR’s passport was missing,” testified the employer.

The employer lodged a complaint with Naif police station where he was told that AR had  left the UAE on the same day at 7.55am.

Investigating the theft, police checked CCTV recordings of CCTV of adjacent shops and found out that the accused entered the shop holding a bag in his hand at around 11pm using keys. He then got out of the shop and locked it after 14 minutes. He returned to the shop after about 20 minutes and left after an hour and it seems that he had changed his shirt. He came again and then left the shop at around 2am carrying the same bag that he had brought the first time he entered the shop.
 
The employer told prosecutors that he had never kept the keys of the shop and the safe with any of the staff and that he used to open and the lock the doors every day.

However, he said that he used to keep the keys with the accused when he went abroad.

Police found out that the accused had booked a ticket to Islamabad and not to his home city Karachi on the same night at 12.20 am.

The accused left the shop for Dubai Airport where he stayed until the departure time of the flight.

Records did not mention how the accused was arrested and brought to Dubai.

However, it mentioned that the accused was confused when he was confronted with his movements in and out the shop. He could also not justify why he stayed for long hours in the airport waiting for the flight.

The court will reconvene on February 11.

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