NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Elite police to take on financial criminals
ABU DHABI - OCT 14: The UAE is training a new cadre of specialised police officers to deal with financial crimes, officials announced yesterday.
When they complete their eight-year course, the officers will have studied overseas, earned PhDs and worked at the UAE Central Bank.
The aim is to build expertise in investigating and prosecuting cases that currently require financial experts to be brought in from foreign authorities.
“It is financial crimes that are the big challenge ahead,” said Maj Gen Nasser al Naimi, the director general of the Minister of Interior’s office.
“Financial crimes should be our obsession, financial security. We have to prepare ourselves. We need the proper army for that.”
To build that “army”, top graduates of the four-year police academy spend a year earning a degree in banking. After that comes six months working at a bank in the UAE and another six at the UAE Central Bank.
Then the trainees are sent overseas – to Britain, the US and Australia – to continue their studies and work alongside financial crime investigators in those countries. Forty officers, who began their training in 2005, are now in that phase of the programme.
When they complete their studies abroad, they will have earned master’s degrees in financial criminal investigation.
In the UAE, they will continue graduate studies in organised crime, earning PhDs.
“In this way, we have an officer who is highly trained in policing and at the same time highly qualified to conduct financial investigations,” Gen al Naimi said.
Gen al Naimi, speaking at a global security conference in the capital, said that in 2008 there were 50 cases of fraud, including credit card fraud, in the city. So far in 2009, there have been 207 fraud cases, not including card fraud.
“We expect financial crimes to increase and become one of the main problems in the next 10 years,” he said. “Criminals will be able to commit their crimes while sitting in their offices. There has to be a shift in the way investigation is done.”
This year Abu Dhabi launched its financial crimes court. It has already handled major cases such as the embezzlement of Dh423 million (US$120m) from an Islamic finance company.
Two former chairmen and three board members were sentenced in June after investigators showed how the men used claims that the company was “risk free” to attract investors, then transferred huge portions of the funds to their own accounts.
“Justice is the principal pillar in achieving the Government’s strategy and promoting investment and growth in the economy,” Sultan Saeed al Badi, the undersecretary of the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, said when the financial crimes court was announced in April.
“These new courts are the first of a kind in the emirate, and we have already started enacting these courts and expect that more of these specialised courts will be created as needed.”
But prosecution of such cases calls for specialised investigators, Gen al Naimi said.
“Previously, when a person was arrested for financial crime, we were left with the choice of finding a financial expert to conduct investigation for the police,” he said.
“As financial crimes increased, the challenge got bigger and we urgently needed specialised officers. We spent quite a while studying this problem. How can we bring about an investigator who is familiar with finance?”
The solution was devised four years ago but revealed for the first time yesterday, as the first batch of trainees neared the end of their foreign studies. They represent roughly the top 13 per cent of their police academy classes.
“They should be good at maths and have high marks in science,” Gen al Naimi said at the conference, addressing top-ranking police officers and security experts.
“We needed to find a person who knew about financial issues and who could at the same time investigate these crimes.”
He said that conventional crimes – those involving guns and violence – were decreasing and being contained.
Dubai also has placed a priority on fighting corruption and financial crimes.
Since a massive anti-corruption inquiry was launched this year, fraud involving billions of dirhams has been uncovered, officials said, including one involving the government-owned Dubai Islamic Bank and another involving Al Boom Holdings.
New curbs on illegal behaviour at golf course
A worker clears up some of the beer bottles discarded near Al Ain golf course. Essam al Ghalib / The National
AL AIN - OCT 14: Police are stepping up patrols in response to complaints of illicit activities, including drinking, near the old Al Ain golf course.
The evidence, cleanup crews say, is scattered across the area, much of which blows onto the golf course.
Yesterday, The National saw piles of debris that included empty beer and whiskey bottles, beer cans, glue tubes, used condoms and used syringes.
“Every day there are people drinking and doing illegal activities right next to the golf course,” said Abey Ratne, 47, the Indian caretaker of the course, who supervises the workers who keep it clean. “Every day the same cars and other cars show up and park during the day and night to do things they shouldn’t do,” he said.
“The police don’t come down here [enough] because it is off the main road, but they really should.”
Lt Col Mohammed al Suhail, of Abu Dhabi Police’s Al Ain division, said officers would take immediate action. “We will send a number of patrols and Criminal Investigations Divisions undercover officers to the area to ensure that all those there are not engaging in illegal or illicit activities,” he said.
“If someone is engaging in immoral activity on the street he will be arrested and prosecuted – non-residential, outlying areas are no exception.”
On Sunday night, police patrols swept through the area. The next day saw cleanup crews removing bottles and other rubbish.
The Centre of Waste Management in Abu Dhabi declined to comment on what activities might have been going on near the golf course, but sent two area supervisors to arrange for the items left behind by those who frequent the area to be removed.
“This area is known to us,” said an operations manager with MBM-Dallah, the company hired to clean the area, which is called Khatm al Shiklah and is just down the road from the Falcon Research Institute.
“We will clean up the area today, and within three days there will be more to clean up.
“The police don’t come here as it’s not a residential area and, if they do, they do not have the right to question anyone unless they receive a complaint of illegal activity going on or they see it themselves.
“We will step up our clean-up efforts of the area.”
Mr Ratne said the problem was that rather than drinking at nearby hotels, people were using the vacant area so they would not be seen.
“These people buy their booze from the liquor shops and the hotels on the road nearby, and come here to get drunk,” said Mr Ratne.
“They come here and drink and when they want more alcohol they come to the golf course and ask me for it but I always turn them away.
“We sell alcohol only to members that will drink it on the property and to no one else.”
A Centre of Waste Management staffer visiting the area during the day was startled by what she saw in a parked car.
“I am truly shocked,” she said, covering her mouth with her hands. “If this is happening in the middle of the day, then what is happening at night?”
Abu Dhabi First Grand Prix - Some, at least, are hoping for an uneventful race day
Timo Glock, the German Toyota F1 driver, is carried by rescue staff to an ambulance after crashing during qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka this month. Mark Baker / AP
ABU DHABI - oct 14: The success of Abu Dhabi’s first Grand Prix may not depend on who wins the race, whether the 60,000 fans leave happy or whether the Formula One championship leader Jenson Button clinches the world crown on November 1.
Instead, it may lie in whether the 83 members of staff at the Yas Marina Circuit’s medical centre are called on during the race weekend.
If they are not, it will mean the Grand Prix will have passed without an accident, and that every one of the 20 F1 drivers and those competing in the three support races will leave Abu Dhabi unscathed and in good health.
The risks during race weekend will be enormous. Formula One is the world’s fastest motorsport, and the difference between survival and death can be a matter of seconds.
Forty-seven doctors, seven paramedics, nine nurses and 18 drivers, as well as support staff, will be on hand to ensure that any driver injured during the race weekend will receive the highest standard of care within 30 seconds of an accident.
Most of the medical team have been recruited from other circuits worldwide. Some are from hospitals in the UAE.
The team will be headed by Dr Sean Petherbridge, the chief medical officer of the Automobile and Touring Club UAE (ATCUAE), who said: “We could be asked to do nothing, and that would be the best-case scenario.”
With three days of practice, qualifying and racing in four different categories across the weekend, Dr Petherbridge said the team should prepare for the possibility of one major incident.
This compares with an average of 10 emergency situations during the UAE Desert Challenge, an annual cross-desert rally organised by the ATCUAE.
Should a crash occur, a medical car belonging to the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the sport’s governing body, will be first on the scene.
The scale of the response will be decided by an FIA team assessing the scene from a control room that contains 50 separate television screens.
A second emergency vehicle would then be dispatched, at which point a helicopter’s engine would be started in case the casualty has to go to hospital.
An ambulance would follow immediately afterwards if necessary. Teams will be on standby at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City and Mafraq Hospital should a driver require urgent medical assistance.
One section of the track, a 1.1km straight approaching the west grandstand, will see the F1 cars reaching up to 307kph before slowing to enter a tight bend.
The risks of a collision at that speed, and of suffering injuries by being brought to a halt from such a high speed, are considerable.
On the sidelines of the Trauma and Accident and Emergency Conference in the capital yesterday, Dr Ruben Peralta, who will be chief surgeon at the medical centre, said: “Head injuries and spinal injuries are the real danger.
“But you have to look out for deceleration injuries, they can be quite bad.
“They can cause problems in the bowels, for the bones but also the arteries, by the arteries becoming detached because you have slowed down so quickly. That is one of the main concerns.”
While better car design and stringent security procedures have made F1 safer, the sport is not immune from danger.
The Ferrari driver Felipe Massa suffered a fractured skull at the Hungarian Grand Prix in July after a spring broke off from the car in front and struck him on the head.
Toyota’s Timo Glock may miss the Abu Dhabi race having suffered a cracked vertebrae in a crash during the Japanese Grand Prix two weeks ago.
Dr Petherbridge told the conference: “Even though it is safer now, the speed is still an issue. With the great speed involved in circuit racing, it is typically all or nothing.
Two out of five Dubai children found to be overweight
ABU DHABI - OCT 14: More than one in three children in Dubai are overweight, according to a study released yesterday by Dubai Health Authority.
“We need an organised programme to fight obesity,” said Dr Fatma al Attar, head of the community programme section at the health authority. “We can’t do it with just a one week campaign or a day of activities.”
A three-year survey of 1,133 pupils in grades 10, 11 and 12 found 26.7 per cent overweight and 12.2 per cent obese. The study was the first of its kind conducted by the government agency.
“We have to focus on behaviour and environment,” Dr al Attar said. “Most of the cases of childhood obesity that go to clinics have no genetic problems or hormonal imbalances. It was the environmental factors that caused their obesity.”
Males are more likely to be overweight: 30.1 per cent of the boys compared with 23.1 per cent of the girls. “Our explanation for this is that boys are going through hormonal changes and their muscles are growing,” the doctor said. “Another explanation is that females are more worried about their looks, so maybe they are taking more care than boys about their weight.”
Non-nationals were more likely to be overweight than Emiratis, which Dr al Attar attributed partly to expatriates enjoying a higher socio-economic status than they would in their home countries.
“With the non-nationals, usually both parents are working so the children rely more on ready-made food,” she added. “National ladies usually don’t work, and employ housemaids who are preparing their food.”
As the children got older, the likelihood of obesity decreased, probably because of education and vanity. In grade 10 the level of hormones shot up, but by grade 12 they levelled off, Dr al Attar said.