In 2023, Caoimhe Robinson bought a 20,569-square-foot villa, still under construction, for about $2.1 million in an upscale section of Dubai, close to Zayed University. Even unfinished, the structure’s white walls, arched doorways and red roof call to mind an elegant Mediterranean retreat, one befitting an area that one real estate website describes as “a...
The ringleader of a money laundering group that smuggled tens of millions of pounds of criminal cash out of the UK has been hit with a confiscation order. Abdullah Alfalasi was given the order totalling £3,496,778.68 following a National Crime Agency investigation into his finances. The 48-year-old Emirati national was previously convicted of co-ordinating a...
Bertrand Monnet isn’t your ordinary business school professor. Standing at well over six feet tall, he has a quiet intensity to him that’s reminiscent of the actor Vincent Cassel. A former French marine, Monnet now teaches at the EDHEC Business School in France, where he studies the international black market in illicit drugs, which, according to...
Spectacular skyscrapers, luxury lifestyles, and sunny beaches — these are the hallmarks of Dubai, a Middle Eastern financial hub known as a playground for the global rich. But the glamorous emirate also has a darker reputation as a tax haven, a top destination for illicit cash, and a preferred hub for money laundering, often through...