Draft insolvency laws meant to overhaul bankruptcy procedures and bring the UAE into line with international standards will be redundant as long as bounced cheques remain a criminal offence, lawyers warn.
Many banks tend to begin criminal proceedings as soon as a customer defaults, rather than try to negotiate, says Mazen Boustany, head of banking and finance at the law firm Habib Al Mulla & Company.
"When you have a bazooka, you use it," Mr Boustany says. "The purpose is not to put the borrower in jail. The purpose is to recover the funds."
Well I suppose dubai should shoot down everyone because they seem to be trigger happy. The purpose is to bully people into paying, leaving often the most vulnerable languishing in jail. The knock on effect long term on society with this debtors prison approach will become a crime against humanity. although I appreciate the UAE cannot overnight decriminalise cheques measures can be put in place to start to improve the systems and processes to make it harder to file bounced cheque cases.
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