One of the officers, a 28-year-old sergeant, was accused of accepting a total of Dh767,000 ($18,239) in bribe from an Omani man.
Two officers from the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) have been sentenced to three years in jail on bribery and forgery charges by the Court of First Instance.
One of the officers, a 28-year-old sergeant, was accused of accepting a total of Dh767,000 ($208,799) in bribe from an Omani man.
The sergeant was based in the detention and deportation of violators section, investigation department, follow-up on violators and foreigners sector, GDRFA, when he processed, in an unlawful way, hundreds of transactions.
The transactions would include exit passes for individuals of different nationalities, who were still present in the UAE. He was also accused of processing temporary blocking on tourists wrongfully reported absconding.
The sergeant was accused of forging as many as 571 electronic documents and unlawfully using a colleague's username to process the unlawful transactions. That colleague, a 33-year-old officer, denied earlier in court the charges of helping and abetting in the forgery and bribery crimes. The Omani was accused of offering the bribes to the sergeant.
All three defendants have each been sentenced to three years in jail and ordered each to pay a Dh150,000 ($40,834) fine. The Omani also received a deportation order.
The irregularities, which started from August 2007 until August 2012, were discovered in early January 2015.
According to a report by the follow-up on violators and foreigners sector and the financial resources department at the GDRFA, the directorate incurred more than Dh2.2 million ($600,000) in losses as the officers on trial did not collect the fees when processing the said transactions.
An officer in the preventive security department in the GDRFA said: "We were informed by reliable secret sources that the first accused was dealing with the Omani defendant to process illegal transactions. The applications included temporary blocking of files (absconding reports) in the system."
They would pass the applications without settling Dh6,500 ($1,769) worth of fee for every tourist who was falsely reported as bsconding.
He would also issue exit passes for violators, who had cumulated fines. He would disregard the non-payment of such fines after collecting bribes, the witness added.
The court ruling may be appealed.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
