A young British citizen of Pakistani origin, Muzhaz Akhtar, who said that he had an e150 million project in Malta, has been arrested in Dubai and charged with fraud.

Akhtar has been dubbed the “Yoharah” (Jewel) thief after allegedly swindling cash in a multi-million dollar real estate venture in Dubai that turned sour.

He went to Dubai to market a e260 million project in Spain located in an area preferred by Arabs. He also claimed he had a e150 million project in Malta. He focused all his attention on Dubai, where his project was supposed to have cost $22 billion.

Sources in Malta spoke of a man of Pakistani origin who had offered to buy the Mistra Village Complex. He was represented by a group of Maltese lawyers and asked for a Lm2 million loan from a local bank. Pressure was reported to have been exerted to facilitate his mission, but he was later reported to have been arrested in Dubai. It is not conclusively proved that this Pakistani is Muzhaz Akhtar and Akhtar could have been speaking of another project at the same time.

When the Dubai CID went to arrest him at his offices on 4 January, Maz (his nickname) ordered one of his assistants to meet the CID officers and have coffee with them until he could join them. In the meantime, he took his Ferrari and drove quickly to Abu Dhabi airport in a bid to leave the country. However, a flight delay led to his arrest before his plane took off for Qatar.

Under interrogation, 34-year-old Maz told investigators that he was flying to Doha to fetch some “legal papers”.

When people in Dubai heard from various sources that Maz was in police custody, they hurried to the his offices to claim their money, and courts began receiving petitions against the man.

Maz arrived in Dubai in January 2004, and had the Dubai Police and other authorities not been alert, he could have become another Patel, the Indian businessman who ran away with hundreds of million of dirhams in bank facilities a few years ago and was never caught.

A pan-Arab business magazine, Al Iktissad Wal Aamal, carried a full report on the case in its recent issue, highlighting efforts by the Dubai government to eliminate any threat to the investment environment in the city.

However, media reports suggested there was a certain reluctance to reveal information on the case, based on the police conviction that it could adversely affect the reputation of Dubai as a booming city.

When a top CID official was first asked about the case, he denied it ever existed in the first place. But officials recently broke the barrier of silence, reiterating that “real” real estate projects in the booming city were fully backed by the Dubai government.

Maz claimed he had no problem with financing channels, expecting $4 billion in sales in the first phase of the Dubai Yoharah project, according to statements he gave to Al Iktissad Wal Aamal. But his Spain project was suspended because of land ownership problems, and the Malta project was also suspended as the land was classified as a historical site where construction was banned. In addition, Maz was wanted in relation with embezzlement cases in Norway, the Khaleej Times reported yesterday.

Sometime later, Dubai newspapers carried a statement by an official saying that the Yoharah project did not exist in Dubai and would not exist in the future. In his meetings with journalists, however, Maz claimed that “some people did not want the project to see the light of the day because it was a threat to their projects”.

He also claimed he was negotiating for projects in Spain, Lebanon, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. A few weeks later, he broke the news that he had become a partner in a holding company and in a real estate project in Sharjah. He was later arrested, imprisoned for a year to be followed by deportation for deceit and embezzlement.

The Dubai Court of First Instance, headed by Adviser Hasan Al Qasanji, gave its ruling in the first of nine cases in the “World’s Seven Wonders” project, on 23 January 2005. Maz was ordered to be jailed for a year, to be followed by deportation. The court said he had embezzled about Dh13 million from a Riyadh-based Saudi company. The amounts involved in other cases are about Dh20 million.

Close associates of the man said he had come to Dubai with his family, and started living a life of luxury. He met UAE businessman Mohammed Meer Khori through a business contact and decided to set up Yoharah, with Khori owning 51 per cent as per ownership laws in the UAE.

A project was supposed to have started at Dubailand, but even before official papers were submitted or processed, Maz appointed real estate agents Better Homes to sell apartments and villas in the project.

His downfall came when a friend of Khori called to say he had bought two villas in the project. Khori told the friend he knew nothing about that, and the friend sought police assistance.