Ministry employee charged with forging salary certificate for loan

by: Marie Nammour

A police lieutenant quoted the accused as admitting that he had forged the documents as he had financial obligations towards other banks.   An employee at the Ministry of Economy, who allegedly faked a salary certificate to get a bank loan worth Dh100,000, has been charged with attempted fraud and forgery in the Court of First Instance.

A salesman at the bank, where the 38-year-old Egyptian defendant allegedly tried to obtain the loan from, said part of his duties was to promote the loans by calling potential customers.

“I called the accused in May last year and offered him a loan. I told him to send a salary certificate and a bank statement of account. He sent his documents by e-mail later,” the Indian salesman said in the investigation. The salesman later met the accused at the car park of a shopping centre in Deira and got his signature on the bank loan request. “I asked him for the original copies of the documents he had sent to me and he claimed he did not have them then.” The salesman later collected a salary certificate which bore the seal and logo of the Ministry of Economy.

“I got suspicious because the defendant did not enquire about the interest rate of the loans given by our bank. Our loan interest rate is higher than that of the bank where the defendant’s salary was being transferred to.”

 The salesman later learnt from the bank’s manager that the salary certificate and the bank statement of account submitted by the accused were forged.

A police lieutenant quoted the accused as admitting in the investigation that he had forged the documents and enclosed them to his loan request as he had financial obligations towards other banks.

“He admitted he applied for a salary certificate from the Ministry of Economy and for a bank statement of account. He then used a computer programme to falsify details of the documents. He changed his salary from Dh11,000 to Dh20,000. He also modified numbers and bank transactions on the bank statement of account.”

He then printed the forged salary certificate, which he stamped with a fake ministry’s seal, on an authentic paper bearing the ministry’s logo.

The accused is also accused of faking a government seal (the seal of the Ministry of Economy) and the seal of the bank (where his salary was transferred) and using the fake seals by stamping them on the forged documents to obtain a loan.

Source: khaleejtimes