The UAE closes in on the ‘shady men in sunny places’

Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters

The UAE is a safe haven for foreign criminals fleeing justice in their national jurisdictions, isn’t it? That at least is the traditional narrative from many in the West. 

Maybe they should check with Paul “Boom Boom” Cahoon, a cage fighter who is now back in his native Liverpool awaiting trial on drug charges.

Or with the Albanian Dorian Petoku, now detained in Dubai ahead of extradition to Italy to serve a prison sentence for drug trafficking. 

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Cahoon and Petoku presumably thought they were safe in the Emirates, only to find that the long arm of the law extends to the sunny beaches and soaring skyscrapers of the UAE.

They were wrong – as were Sanjay Shah, Raffaele Imperiale, Noureddine Hajjioui and Gergely Franc, who have all been extradited from the UAE to stand trial in Europe in recent years. 

Far from being a refuge for “shady men in sunny places”, the UAE has accelerated the pace of its extraditions.

According to figures shared with AGBI by government sources, 109 wanted persons were extradited from the UAE in 2022. That figure almost doubled to 214 in 2023 and the authorities show no sign of slackening this year.

I imagine that criminals come to the UAE for the same reason that legitimate entrepreneurs do – the ease of doing “business”, relaxed regulatory regime and comfortable lifestyle.

The challenge for the UAE authorities lies in sifting out the bad apples from the thousands of honest and decent business people who see the advantages of a UAE base and whose presence forms a crucial part of the Emirati economic model – a trading and financial hub in a fast-growing part of the world.

Privately, UAE officials express frustration that the “safe haven for fugitives” image persists, despite the country’s increased extradition rate.

They make the point that suspects in high-profile drugs or arms trafficking cases, or those accused of terrorism-related money laundering, must be known to police forces and prosecutors. So, why were they allowed to depart to the UAE and in many cases take their ill-gotten gains with them?

European law enforcement agencies achieved a major victory in the battle against organised crime in 2020 when they broke the encrypted communications system EncroChat. But in many cases, they have been slow to make arrests and prosecutions based on that information, or to seize assets. 

Petoku had already been convicted of membership of a criminal organisation when he escaped from a rehab facility in Italy and made it to the UAE.

A full extradition treaty is a long and complicated bit of diplomacy, so the UAE has been negotiating mutual legal assistance treaties on an ad hoc bilateral basis. It has these pacts in place with 45 jurisdictions. More are planned this year and next.

The legal authorities in both countries must be seen to observe the letter of international law. And it is this legal punctiliousness that can bedevil extradition procedures.

Members of the Kinahan family living in Dubai have been accused of drug dealing and money laundering by police in Ireland and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

There is no formal extradition treaty between the UAE and Ireland, so negotiations on the Kinahan case are proceeding slowly and carefully with Dubai police acting in close co-operation with the authorities in Dublin.

The UAE’s enthusiasm for engaging with the international legal community on extradition was one of the reasons for the removal of the Emirates from the Financial Action Task Force grey list earlier this year, along with renewed vigour in the application of anti-money-laundering procedures.

Critics who still doubt Abu Dhabi’s commitment to fighting financial crime should perhaps look closer to home to understand why fugitives and their assets end up in the UAE.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia and is a media adviser to First Abu Dhabi Bank of the UAE