The Abu Dhabi Money Laundering Court convicted Ghafoor of committing “two counts of tax evasion and money laundering related to a tax evasion operation in his country and sentenced him to three years in prison and a fine of three million dirhams [$US 816,748]with deportation from the UAE,” according to WAM.
Ghafoor, who is also a co-founder and board member of their organization, was detained by UAE security agents at Dubai International Airport, rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said in a press release on Friday.
According to WAM, the case arose when US authorities requested judicial assistance from the UAE in relation to their investigations into Ghafoor for alleged tax evasion and making suspicious money transfers to the UAE, prompting an Abu Dhabi probe into his bank accounts.
The UAE Prosecutor’s Office in Abu Dhabi has begun implementing and investigating the request for judicial assistance and verifying the nature of the financial transactions related to the accounts and wire transfer, WAM reported. The PP has reportedly found a suspected money laundering offense committed in the country.
The PP “commended the mutual coordination to fight transnational crimes with the United States, which led to the arrest of the accused and his presentation before the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court in accordance with the legal procedures established in this regard,” WAM reported.
The US State Department responded to Ghafoor’s sentence on Saturday.
“We are aware of the arrest of American citizen Asim Ghafoor in the UAE. We have raised the issue of his detention at senior levels with the Emirati authorities and requested further information. We are following his case closely and providing appropriate consular support; consular officers from the U.S. Embassy visited him today,” a State Department spokesman said. “We have conveyed our expectation that Mr. Ghafoor’s rights to a fair and public hearing and to fair trial guarantees will be fully respected and that he will be treated humanely, and that U.S. rights to consular access will be fully respected.”
DAWN said it informed the US State Department of his detention on Thursday when he arrived from the US in Dubai in transit to Istanbul. DAWN said US consular officials met with Ghafoor on Friday and said he was being held in Abu Dhabi on charges related to an “absentee” money laundering conviction, but Ghafoor was “not aware of any to be a legal case against him and there is no reason to believe that he is involved in any legal dispute in the UAE,” according to a Friday news release issued by DAWN.
Ghafoor passed through Dubai International Airport without incident less than a year ago, according to DAWN.
CNN has reached out to the UAE government for further comment.
“We are outraged by the unjustified detention of our board member and are extremely concerned for his health and physical safety given the well-documented record of ill-treatment in the UAE, including torture and inhumane treatment,” Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s executive director, said Friday. “We urge the Biden administration to secure the release of an arbitrarily detained US attorney before agreeing to meet with the UAE leader [Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan] in Jeddah tomorrow.”
US officials said earlier on Saturday that they were “aware” of reports that Ghafoor had been detained in the UAE, but declined to offer other details about his arrest.
“I will say that there is no indication that it has anything to do with Khashoggi or anything else. But we are aware of it,” said a senior US administration official.
When President Joe Biden met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, both leaders ignored pointed questions about Khashoggi’s former lawyer. Biden publicly invited the UAE leader to Washington before the end of the year.
Another administration official said the US had raised the issue of Ghafoor’s detention “at senior levels with Emirati authorities” and had “requested further information” about his situation.
Consular officials from the US Embassy visited Ghafoor on Saturday, the senior US administration official said.
Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and columnist for the Washington Post who was critical of the Saudi rulers, was assassinated in a consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018.
The US declassified an intelligence report last year that concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. Despite once vowing to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” on the world stage, Biden punched the crown prince at his meeting in Jeddah on Friday — a salute critics say established Bin Salman on the world stage, and Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan called “ shameful.”
Biden told reporters later that he had raised the issue of Khashoggi’s killing directly with Prince bin Salman and said he believed the crown prince was responsible.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan told reporters on Saturday: “The Crown Prince responded quite clearly to President Biden’s remarks on the Khashoggi affair, that this crime, while very deplorable and heinous, is something the Kingdom took very seriously , which was acted upon in a manner commensurate with its position as a responsible party. These are problems, mistakes that happen in every country, including the United States.”
DAWN is an organization that describes itself on its website as “a dedicated group of analysts, researchers, lawyers and activists who aim to fulfill Khashoggi’s vision of helping promote democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa.”
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