Scandals and speculation of cheats, fraud, and misappropriation are striking the real estate in Dubai. The multi-billion dollar structure fad, which has fascinated investors from all over the world, has apparently brought in unpleasant types who have been aggressive on the boundless desires of locals and foreigners queuing to invest in the market.
A UK company which claimed to have acquired a 900-apartment plot in the proposed Jumeriah Village project, has reportedly sold off apartments in the plot, with no prospect of them ever being built. The company, Strategic Property Investment, and its associates, William Cowe and Mark Emlick, are being investigated by Dubai and UK authorities.
Dubai authorities are also investigating the mysterious Al Areifi Tower being constructed at Dubai Marina. As we reported several weeks ago, Khalid Saud Al-Areifi & Partner Co., of Riyadh Saudi Arabia, sold several hundred apartments in the project off-the-plan some years ago, taking full payment upfront.
In recent weeks the owners of the apartments have been receiving telephone calls and faxes from Al Areifi representatives in Saudi Arabia advising them construction on the project had stopped and would not be resumed. Investors say they have been offered their original cost, plus interest, back.
We have sighted one of the letters sent which verifies the investors' claims.When we visited the site two weeks ago we found construction in full swing. We contacted the builder on site who confirmed there had been no disruption to the construction and it was proceeding at 'full steam.'
Reports are now circulating that Al Areifi sold the site to the newly-formed, Abu Dhabi-based, Eskan Properties. A report in Gulf News Friday, however quotes a company spokesman as saying, 'We sold the tower on again a week back.'Having bought their apartments and paid for them in full, well before construction started, investors are now wondering how 'their' apartments could be on-sold, on two separate occasions since.
Several calls to Emaar Properties, the master developer of Dubai Marina, where the project is sited, have not been returned.
Meantime the investigation into the conduct of the former CEO of Dubai's second largest property developer, Deyaar, has been widened. According to Dubai's Attorney General, Essam al-Humaidan, a second person, Ganesan Krishna Kumar, 49, has been arrested in connection with the investigation. Kumar, originally from India, was a co-founder, and is managing director, of the Dubai-based advertizing agency, Masterbrand (ME) Ltd.,Two other men have also been detained and questioned, but have since been released.
Zack Shahin, Deyaar's ex-CEO is being probed in relation to claims of possible embezzlement. Deyaar has more than 1,600 apartments, as well as retail, and office complexes, under construction in Dubai.The glitz and glamour of Dubai's red-hot property market must be feeling the heat of the latest troubles, coming on top of the debacle surrounding the Damac project on the Palm Jebel Ali.
Damac, which claims to be the largest private property developer in the Middle East, sold apartments off-the-plan in what it called the Palm Springs project, a luxury apartments and resort project on the Palm at Jebel Ali.Four years after launching the project, Damac wrote to investors saying it had been abandoned as the master developer of the Palm had changed the plans and the project could not now fit the site.
Within days the master developer, Nakheel, announced it was unaware of Damac's claims, and that the changes which Damac referred to had been made ten months earlier, and Damac was happy with them.A hastily convened meeting by the authorities, involving Damac and Nakheel, resolved the matter, with Damac agreeing to proceed with the project. That action averted a class-action lawsuit against Damac by at least sixty angry investors, most of whom were from the UK.
