Khaberni - The Dubai Civil Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by a citizen who demanded two jointly responsible individuals to pay an amount of three million and 543 thousand dirhams, and the legal interest at a rate of 5% from the date of demand until full payment, including fees and expenses.
The plaintiff stated in his claim that he is a regular benefactor, donating to charities and sponsoring orphans, and noted that the defendants deceived him by claiming they had direct relations with needy families and charitable entities in an Arab country, and offered to deliver humanitarian aid to those families, including medical, housing, educational expenses, and orphan sponsorships.
He mentioned that they provided him with a phone SIM card designated for communicating with those families, through which he received messages using the «WhatsApp» application from international numbers, containing expressions of gratitude and appreciation from individuals who were said to be beneficiaries of his aid, which reinforced his trust in them and led him to hand over the embezzled money in the form of cash and checks.
The plaintiff relied on the judgment issued in the lawsuit which preliminarily sentenced the defendants to a year in jail and fined them, jointly, the amount in question and ordered their deportation from the country, while referring the civil lawsuit to the competent court, asserting that the act committed by the defendants harmed him both psychologically and financially.
In turn, the first defendant appeared before the court and submitted a memorandum requesting the suspension of the civil lawsuit until the consideration of his appeal against the preliminary criminal judgment at the Appeals Court, and the court complied with his request, until the Appeals Court judgment was issued, which overturned the preliminary judgment, acquitted him of the charges, and provided an official certificate of the judgment's finality, thus reactivating the civil lawsuit for adjudication based on what was established by the criminal judiciary.
After reviewing the documents submitted by both parties in the lawsuit, the civil court commenced its decision by establishing the legal rule governing the evidentiary impact of the criminal judgment before the civil judiciary, referencing Article 269 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which stipulates that «a final criminal judgment issued in the subject of the criminal lawsuit, whether acquittal or conviction, has evidentiary effect that the civil courts must abide by in lawsuits where no binding judgment has been issued regarding the occurrence of the crime, its legal classification, and its attribution to the perpetrator».
The court also referred to Article 88 of the Evidence Law, which determines that the court is not bound by the criminal judgment except in the facts it resolved, and only if resolving them was necessary, and it is not bound by an acquittal except if it was based on denying the occurrence of the act accused.
The court reviewed settled jurisprudence from the Court of Cassation that a criminal judgment has evidentiary impact before the civil court in what it definitively resolved regarding the occurrence of the act, its legal classification, and its attribution to the perpetrator, and that this impact is related to public order, which precludes re-litigating the same issue again to avoid conflicting judgments.
The court noted that, by referring to the appellate criminal judgment records, it was established that the acquittal was based on the accusation resting on the statements of the victim and his son and a consultancy expert’s report, while the defendant countered that he did indeed receive the sums but had delivered them to various entities and individuals in that country as humanitarian aid, supported by a defense witness whom the court found credible, in addition to the defendant presenting receipts issued by individuals who declared they received humanitarian aid.
The criminal judgment noted that the case file lacked definitive evidence proving that the defendant had not delivered the amounts to their intended recipients, nor was the amount involved in the crime found, pointing out that the expert report relied upon in the preliminary judgment for conviction was based on documents provided by the plaintiff himself, and one cannot use his own actions as evidence against another.
The Appellate Criminal Court concluded that the evidence was insufficiently conclusive and certain, and that the accusation could only be based on indirect statements unsupported by sufficient evidence, hence it ruled for acquittal due to its doubts about the occurrence of the act and the insufficiency of the evidence.
The Civil Court confirmed that the acquittal was based on insufficient evidence and doubts about the occurrence of the act, thus it holds evidentiary value before it and prevents the court from reconsidering the matter of the fraud crime or its attribution to the first defendant, as these matters were definitively resolved by the criminal judgment.
