Dubai, April 12: A former United Arab Emirates minister, Khalifa Bakhit al-Falasi, was sentenced to a one-year suspended jail term on Monday on corruption charges, a newspaper reported.
Dubai’s cassation court also gave one-year suspended jail sentences and ordered the deportation of two co-defendants from the United States and India only identified in the Gulf News report by their initials S.A. and P.M.
A civil lawsuit related to the case was still pending, the daily said.
Falasi, 51, was sentenced to two years in prison on February 24, 2009 for fraudulently taking control of a company after the death of his Lebanese business partner.
The American and Indian received the same sentence for complicity.
The trio were acquitted on appeal on May 28, but Dubai’s high court threw out that ruling in July, ordering the former minister without portfolio and his co-defendants to be tried again before the appeals court by new judges.
The defendants were acquitted in November in a second appeals court trial, but the cassation court, the UAE’s highest tribunal, reversed that ruling on Monday, handing down the suspended sentences instead.
Falasi’s 26-year-old son was acquitted of wrongdoing in the initial trial.
—Agencies