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Bounced cheques and courts’ workload
Bounced cheques and courts’ workload Marie Nammour / 1 September 2013 Cases of bounced cheques are seemingly a continual problem for banks and the business world and, in turn, a problem for courts — with one legal advocate suggesting banks adopt a stricter approach to issuing cheque books to customers. Bounced cheque cases which result from business dealings, leasing contracts, credit cards or real estate and contracting project deals worth millions of dirhams, constitute a huge workload for criminal courts which handle these cases on a daily basis. Though there have not been any recent figures on what percentage of criminal cases are bad cheque cases courts handled last year, officials say it is not a small part. According to the 2012 Annual Report of the Dubai Courts and the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, as many as 37,816 criminal cases were examined by the Dubai Courts in 2012 — an increase of 13 per cent from the previous year, when 33,432 criminal cases were heard. Though there are no available updated figures released by the Public Prosecution on the number of the bad cheque complaints received by Dubai police stations, media reports suggest local banks have received about 1.4 million dud cheques worth a total of $46.8 million in the year to February. Recovering the money In order to recover the money lost when a cheque bounces, complainants must file a civil lawsuit. A civil court starts to look into the lawsuit once the criminal side is determined by the Court of Misdemeanours or the two higher courts (if the defendant decides to appeal). “The claimant needs to wait for the 15-day legal deadline to pass and if the defendant does not appeal then (the claimant) can proceed with the civil lawsuit. He has to provide the civil court with copies and documents from the Public Prosecution stating that the verdict was final.” If the defendant is found guilty, the court will refer the civil lawsuit to the competent civil court and the claimant can pursue it to recover his money. “The case then falls in the hands of the execution judge who would compel the defendant to pay up the cheque or the latter would risk being jailed again.” Such civil lawsuits may take between three to four months at the Dubai Courts before a ruling could be issued. Al Dakhakhny said his firm’s smallest case was for a cheque worth Dh30,000, while the biggest case handled was for a cheque worth Dh3.5 million. mary@khaleejtimes.com Those bounced cheques constitute about a fifth of the overall cheques the local banks received as per statistics by the Central Bank in the same period of time. There has even been a proposal by the UAE Bank Association to the Ministry of Justice to set up courts specialised in the bounced cheque and financial cases to preserve the rights of the banks, the lending and financing firms and other parties. Cheques are a tool Counsel Ahmed Al Dakhakhny of Saeed Al Barq for Advocacy and Legal Consultancy, told Khaleej Times one way some cases could be prevented was through banks limiting issuance of cheque books. “The cheque is a means for settling one’s financial dues. If the banks adopt stricter criteria for issuing cheque books to their customers they would be contributing somehow to curbing the problem of misuse of cheques. The criteria would take into consideration, for instance, the customers’ financial conditions and whether they would be able later to respect the trust the other party gave to them by accepting their signed cheques.” He said when the Emirati legislator put the Penal Code together, he dedicated certain articles to the bounced cheque cases. “The cheque is a tool of financial settlement used in business dealings among people. By protecting the cheque, the legislator has protected the economy and the businesses.” He said bounced cheques severely interrupted the running of businesses and could threaten the ability of a business to deliver on agreements. “Giving a bad cheque can stall a whole process of dealings; to name a few the businesses of trading, exportation and importation, and construction and contracting”. Al Dakhakhny said the cheque was a way to fulfil one’s financial obligations without using cash and giving someone a cheque rather than cash suggested a certain trust by the receiver. However, when the cheque bounced, it meant the person who issued it betrayed that trust — which naturally entailed legal consequences. “A defendant on trial in a bad cheque case would face fraud and breach of trust charges”. Penalty depends on the Judge’s discretion According to article 401 of the Penal Code, any person who writes a bounced cheque shall be slapped with a fine of no less than Dh500 and given a jail sentence of no more than 3 years. Issuing a bad cheque, however, does not result in the defendant’s deportation, Al Dakhakhny pointed out. “The judge will look into the case circumstances, namely the cheque value, the defendant’s conditions and the reason why the cheque bounced. The penalty will depend on the judge’s discretion”. He revealed that his office had an average of four to five bounced cheque cases seen by the Dubai Courts on a daily basis. “Our clients in those cases are of different nationalities. They come from various backgrounds. We have the businessmen, the investors, the workers and other low-income employees. While the first category would take loans, and back it up by signing security blank cheques, to finance certain business projects, the second category would get indebted by an excessive and miscalculated use of credit cards. The low-paid people might also take loans just to survive till pay day.” Often, such people gave security cheques which they later failed to settle due to their cumulative interests, he said. “We have also other clients who were caught in such cases because of their carefree spending and their purchases of luxury goods. They wanted to buy an expensive flat TV set or a fancy sports car, for example, and they gave security cheques in return as a guarantee for re-payment of the debt. The cheques would most often bounce”. One of his clients is a 35-year-old Iranian investor who was sentenced to three years in prison by Dubai’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, after he lost an appeal on the charge of issuing a bad cheque worth Dh3.5 million. The court referred the civil lawsuit to the relevant civil court. In another case, another investor took a bank loan to finance his purchase of two residential units. The loan was worth more than Dh2 million. The investor was jailed after the bank took action against him when he defaulted the regular payment of instalments. He was told to settle two blank security cheques he had signed, worth in total Dh3.2 million. He was convicted and respectively sentenced to one year and three years in prison for both cases. In a different case, another accused has been ordered by the Court of Misdemeanours to pay a Dh5,000 fine for issuing a bounced cheque worth Dh250,000, and the civil lawsuit was referred to a civil court. What makes someone issue a dud cheque? According to the lawyer, in some cases, it is the lack of knowledge that pushes a person to such a crime as he would usually be oblivious to the legal effects that he might face when giving a cheque, with a high risk of bouncing, in any kind of transaction. In other, more common, cases, some might think their long-standing business deals with a particular party would spare or protect them from legal repercussions due to a relationship of good faith — which turns out to be unfounded. “They would not see the legal trouble coming until they are called to the police stations or served notice about a court case. mary@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
It’s school time again
Sarah Young As school gets back in session and new shoes are on the agenda, getting the right fit is a must for children, says a long-time shoe fitter. An expert on feet and shoe fitting for 44 years, Clarks International global children’s consultant Bob Hardy is visiting Dubai to provide training for Clark store managers, and parents with advice on shoe fitting for children, as school begins. It was extremely important for parents to get the right shoes given the wrong size could do a lot of harm when worn for the whole year, he said — especially considering children would walk about a million steps and spend 1,000 hours in those shoes – absorbing 50 litres of perspiration by the time the year is out. The development of children’s feet was ‘a total mystery’ to many parents, he said, who did not realise how quickly they grew. In the first year alone, a child’s feet would grow 25 millimetres, while from age one to five, they would grow 16mm each year, and then eight to 10mm per year from school age to mid-teens when the feet stopped growing, he said. Shoe companies offered half sizes, and width options, as well as integrating ‘growing room’ into the shoes, he said. Children often did not feel pain from ill-fitting shoes due the large amounts of fatty tissue in their feet, but the damage was still being done and would be felt when they were older, he said. Seventy per cent of adults would have had some sort of serious foot problem by the time they were 30, he said. Only 30 per cent of people actually had a standard fitting, he added. Hardy said a ‘geographical blip’ led him to his profession, as he was born one kilometre from the Clark headquarters. He left school in 1970 at the age of 16 and ended up standing in the Clark’s shoe factory “wondering what the hell I had done”. But it has proved a long love affair taking him on training trips to 45 countries. “I’ve been to so many different countries and met so many people … and it’s nice to see people using the things you’ve passed on or taught them on a daily basis.” His first visit to Dubai was in 1989, and much has changed since that time when a tractor drove up to the plane to collect their luggage. The UAE was one of the most challenging markets, given it was one of the most diverse in the world, and like a “mini-United States” in terms of the various population groups and differing lifestyle choices and tastes, he said. The warm weather and the amount of time spent in air conditioning meant customers could want from sandals to heeled, long boots. And, traditional local preferences meant styles exclusive to the Middle East had to be catered for, such as the men’s Arabic style sandal, he said. The biggest mistake he saw here was the tendency for people to wear ill-fitting sandals, and the number of people he saw “shuffling around and not walking properly, curling their toes up to hold their shoes on,” was worrying, he said. Traditional, natural materials such as leather and rubber were still the best for breathing, flexibility and toughness, he added. So what about his most challenging shoe-fitting experience? An Englishman who was convinced he had size 13 feet that were very wide, and no amount of measuring his feet or fitting shoes would make him believe his feet were actually a narrow size 11. “The shoes he walked in with could have held both his feet. “Although this probably wasn’t a foot problem….” sarah@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
India court finds teenager guilty in Delhi gang-rape case
India court finds teenager guilty in Delhi gang-rape case (AFP) / 31 August 2013 An Indian court found a teenager guilty on Saturday over the fatal gang-rape of a student in New Delhi, a crime that sparked revulsion and angry protests in the country, an official said. Indian policemen escort the juvenile (C, in pink hood), accused in the December 2012 gang-rape of a student, to a court in New Delhi on August 31, 2013. – AFP The juveniles’ court sentenced the teenager to three years in a correctional facility after handing down the first and long-delayed verdict over the brutal assault on the student on a moving bus last December. “He has been held guilty for rape and murder and sentenced to three years subject to review,” Anil Sharma, the chief investigating officer in the case, told reporters outside the court in the capital. The teenager, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was given the maximum penalty after he was tried as a juvenile, and the three years will include the time he has already spent in custody. The victim’s mother emerged from the court in tears, saying “he got just three years … from December onwards he has been given three years”. “He should get an adult sentence,” the emotional mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told reporters. Her daughter, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, died of internal injuries after being raped and assaulted with an iron bar allegedly by six men on the night of December 16. Her male companion was also beaten up before both were thrown from the bus. The attack brought simmering anger about endemic sex crime in India to the boil, and sparked weeks of sometimes violent street protests in the country. The victim’s family had earlier called for the teenager to be given the death penalty, saying the juvenile justice system, which seeks to reform rather than punish, was too lenient. The perceived leniency of the sentence is likely to spark further anger in India where the suspects, some of whom have been beaten up in jail, are public hate figures. Outside the court, up to 20 protesters demanded a harsher punishment, screaming “Hang the juvenile too” and “We want justice.” The separate trial of the four adult suspects in a fast-track court is hearing closing arguments and is expected to wrap up in the next few weeks, with the men facing a possible death sentence if convicted. The fifth adult, the suspected ring leader, died in jail in an apparent suicide. Outrage over the attack pushed parliament to pass a new law toughening sentences for rapists, while there was a round of public soul-searching over the rising tide of violence against women. The Supreme Court this month cleared the way for the principal magistrate, Geetanjli Goel, to deliver the verdict on the juvenile’s case. It was delayed after a petition was lodged in the Supreme Court by an opposition politician for a review of the juvenile law, arguing suspects aged over 16 accused of serious offences should be tried in adult courts. The juvenile, one of six children, was employed to clean the bus allegedly used for the attack and often slept rough or inside the vehicle, reports say. He reportedly left his impoverished home in a village in northern Uttar Pradesh state at the age of 11 to live in Delhi, where he worked in a string of menial jobs until landing the job of cleaning the bus. Children’s rights groups have called for public restraint over the verdict, saying the teenager needed to be given a chance of rehabilitation, adding that India’s child protection services had already failed him. “In fact, every child coming in conflict with the law is a reflection of the state and society failing that child,” Vijaylakshmi Arora, director of policy and research at Child Relief and You, told AFP. Continue reading
