A Dubai court has sentenced the owner of Rahmaniya Group and Ultimate Oil & Gas, Abdulrahman Bashar to one year in prison for a financial crime involving his dealings with CI Energy Company, an oil and gas firm marking the second time in less than five years that he would be sentenced to jail.
In 2020, a UK court also sentenced Abdulrahman Bashar to a ten-month imprisonment.
According to court documents, the UAE court gave the verdict of the current sentence on 30 January 2025 even as Mr Bashar, 48, failed to show up for trial despite being notified.
The public prosecution in the UAE charged him for issuing seven cheques with a combined value of 126.45 million dirhams, drawn on an Emirates Islamic Bank account with a mismatch in his signature.
He is accused of issuing the cheques by “deliberately signing and drafting them in a way that prevents their cashing,” consequently asking that Mr Bashar be punished under extant laws.
Relying on evidence presented to the court, including statements by Jamal Awad Nasser Hussein (the agent of CI Energy), duplicates of the cheques and statements of account, noted that the cheques were returned unpaid on presentation at Emirates Islamic Bank because of disparity in Mr Bashar’s signature.
The court, during the proceeding led by Jugde Hussein Hamdi said, “It is established that the crime of issuing a cheque is realised merely by giving the cheque to the beneficiary knowing that there is no balance available for withdrawal.
“The court sees from the examination of the documents that the incident within the scope of what it has extracted in the aforementioned manner is sufficiently established against the accused to convict him.”