Picture used for illustrative purpose only.

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Court of Appeal upheld a verdict issued by the Court of First Instance sentencing a gang of four Africans to three years in jail to be followed by deportation and fining them Dhs675,000 on charges of stealing the same amount of the fine from the safe of a shipping company after threatening the accountant and two employees with a knife.

One of the defendants is still at large. The case dated back to October last year when an accountant filed a complaint in which he stated that he had been robbed under duress while doing his job in a shipping company.

According to his statement in the investigations, an African visited the company to inquire about the charges of shipping goods to an African country.

After being given a list of the shipping charges, the man went to the waiting room holding his mobile phone. 10 minutes later, three Africans entered the company, took the mobile phones of the existing employees and threatened to kill them.

The accountant said one of the defendants threatened him with a knife and asked him to open the company’s safe, from which Dhs670,000 was stolen. The  three others kept threatening the employees and stealing their mobile phones before they closed the company’s door and fled away.

A policeman said in the investigations that a team of detectives gathered inferences and checked the company’s video recording which led them to identify the suspects and locate their place after a taxi driver reported to the police that he found a mobile phone that was proved to belong to one of the victims.

The taxi driver stated that he transported people of the same specifications to a neighbouring emirate and one of them lost a mobile phone in the back seat. He handed the mobile phone to the police and led them to the place, where a tight trap was set for them.

The policeman added that one of the suspects was arrested with Dhs39,000 in his possession. He admitted that the amount was in exchange for his participation in the theft of the shipping company before he led the police to the other suspects.

Two more suspects were arrested with estimated Dhs30,000 in their possession together with two mobile phones that belonged to the victims.

The three suspects confessed that the remaining amount was in the possession of the fourth suspect, who was still at large.