Middle East Focus: On Bounced Checks, Triggering a Gulf Crisis, Doing Skits in Prison……...

Arabia Deserta

On Bounced Checks, Triggering a Gulf Crisis, Doing Skits in Prison……...

“DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — For more than a year, prosecutors have been cracking down on the corruption and kickbacks that thrived during the boom years in this Persian Gulf city-state. Dozens of executives have been arrested and charged in a high-profile effort to show that fraud will no longer be tolerated….But alongside the con artists and crooks, a rising number of businesspeople have been sent to jail for going into debt. Bouncing a check is a criminal offense here. That fact has begun raising questions about the fairness of Dubai’s laws, especially among the foreigners who make up about 90 percent of the population……. Dubai’s laws are largely based on Egyptian civil law and Islamic law, or Shariah, with no real effort to encompass the tremendous volume of its commerce. While many other Arab countries classify bounced checks as a criminal offense, they are not held to the same standards as Dubai……”

This is common all over the Gulf. A bounced check means jail. It is general knowledge that during the 1980s a bounced check (post-dated) written by a business woman triggered the worst financial crisis in the Middle East up to then, the Manakh Crisis of Kuwait. Lucky for the lady, the man who was the payee had the presence of mind to deposit enough money in her account to make up the insufficiency- then he cashed her check.
Not that she would have gone to jail anyway, being who she was…..
It is sort of probably like how some payday loan companies do in the USA; they get a post-dated check from the borrower. Except that there is no jail for debt. In the Gulf, a bounced check means you go to jail, and stay in jail until the money is paid. Somehow you need to make money while in jail to pay the bounced check. I suppose there is always the black market, trafficking in dope and drugs, or maybe doing singing or comedy skits........forget the comedy skits….
Cheers and Ramadan Kareem
mhg
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