Dubai busts fake $2 million notes racket

Dubai, December 23: Dubai authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle nearly two million fake dollar notes which were stuffed inside a large tea bag consignment that was sent by air from Kenya, newspapers reported on Thursday.

The shipment was seized last month after customs authorities phoned the police and told them they had uncovered dollar notes inside tea bag boxes sent from the African country though a Kenyan shipping firm.

“The shipment was addressed to an Asian man residing in Dubai…we checked the notes and found that they are fake,” aid Brigadier Khalil Al Mansouri, head of the Dubai detectives and criminal investment department.

Emirat Alyoum daily also quoted Rashid Saleh, deputy director of the anti-economic crime division, as saying police seized the Asian man but he denied knowledge of the fake dollar notes.

He said the Asian man acknowledged he had met the sender in Dubai before and that he later asked him to receive the shipment and hand it to his sister in Dubai. “With the help of this Asian man, we managed to get the woman, who also said she did not know anything about the dollar notes,” he said.

“She said she had been told by her brother that he was sending a tea bag consignment to a friend in Dubai and she was to deliver it to a third person called Hassan….after we seized Hassan, he first denied involvement but later confessed to investigators that he was expecting a small amount of fake dollar notes and that he was surprised to know about that big amount.”

Saleh said Hassan had remained in touch with the sender in Kenya and that he and the sender’s sister had been referred to the prosecution.