United Arab Emirates: The family members of a British prisoner in Dubai have asked foreign investors such as the lender JPMorgan as well as fund manager BlackRock to divest their holdings in Dubai Islamic Bank, which it blames for the extended detention of its relative.
The 68-year-old-Ryan Cornelius has been detained in the commercial capital of the Gulf for 14 years after being detained in 2008 along with three other people, including his former business partner Charles Ridley.
All of the four were convicted of defrauding DIB, which is part-owned by the government of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in 2011.
Moreover, at the end of their sentences in 2018, following an application by the bank, a Dubai judge extended their detention by 20 years until they settled $430mn in alleged debt.
The family members of Cornelius, whose health is deteriorating, have been waging a campaign for his release. It has called on the United Kingdom to impose sanctions for alleged human rights abuses on DIb’s chair Mohammed Al Shaibani regarding Cornelius’s disproportionate sentence and what it sees as the cruel treatment and arbitrary detention in jail.
The family mentioned in the statement that DIB applied to extend Cornelius’s sentence as well as, as his effective jailer, could seek to overturn the judgment.
Along with this, DIB stated that it had acted “properly, in the interests of its shareholders and in accordance with applicable laws at all times”.
The English High Court has discovered that these two individuals are guilty of misappropriation of the bank’s money through fraud, DIB highlighted. Further the statment added, “This disagreement has been the subject of detailed review in two jurisdictions, as well as the unanimous conclusion of the judicial proceedings in Dubai-UAE and England is that these men are guilty of fraud.”
