Photo has been used for illustrative purpose.

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

An African working as a security official in a luxury hotel in Dubai stole $8,800 from a safe in a room where an Asian was staying after abusing his powers of entering rooms, using a computer and a program to open and reprogram safes, for guests in emergency cases. The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced him to three months in jail to be followed by deportation and fined him an equivalent amount in the local currency.

The case dated back to June last year when an Asian filed a complaint in which he stated that $8,800 had been stolen from a safe inside a room he was staying in. He said he left the UAE and kept an amount of money inside the safe of a room he rented for a year in a Dubai hotel. When he returned after three weeks, he could not open the safe and consequently called the security official to open it only to discover that no money was in it, he added.

The complainant who confirmed that there was money in the safe, requested an investigation to be initiated into the incident. Accordingly, he summoned the hotel’s security official (suspect) and asked him to bring the room entry and exit report.

The security official tried to procrastinate but later sent the report to the victim, who called the police and reported the incident to them.

In her testimony, the hotel manager said she received another complaint from a woman staying in a different floor in which she stated that she had been robbed and that the money she kept in her safe had disappeared.

After checking the room entry and exit report for both rooms, it was found that the report submitted by the suspect had been tampered with. The report was submitted to the police, which resumed their investigations.

According to a policeman, the investigations showed that the suspect entered the complainant’s room several times, using a key that was delivered to him to enter the rooms in emergency cases or at the request of hotel guests. The suspect was arrested accordingly.

On interrogation, the suspect confessed to have stolen $2,500 from a safe inside the complainant’s room, using the reprogramming computer that was delivered to him to help hotel guests who happened to forget their own passwords. The suspect tried to justify his thefts by stating that he needed money to settle his accumulated debts in his home country.