No More the Dreamland: Two Very Different Princes Are Holding Dubai’s Future

While the world’s eyes were on Doha in the 2022 Qatar World Cup finals, the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, nicknamed Fazza, could not attract press coverage, saying: “There is no place like Dubai, no place like the Emirates.”

Fazza was frank in his attempt to compete with the World Cup during his statement on December 4, 2022, when he said: “Welcome to all the stars, clubs, and sports teams that choose our country as their permanent destination.”

But while declaring that there is no place like Dubai, he ignored the recent negative reports about the city, the crises, and the bad reputation it faces.

Dubai now faces fresh hurdles. Earlier this year, the UAE was added to the Paris-based watchdog Financial Action Task Force’s so-called “grey list,” indicating the Gulf nation’s shortcomings in tackling illicit funds. Since then, the UAE has said it would ramp up extradition pacts.

Being on the grey list means there is a strategic defect in the country’s systems to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and the proliferation of internationally prohibited weapons.

Those matters posed difficult challenges for Fazza, who is also Chairman of the Executive Council of the Emirate of Dubai, and his brother Sheikh Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of the Emirate, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and President of the Dubai International Financial Center.

 

Difficult Challenges

The two sheikhs were held responsible for the city’s current state of notoriety and for being a haven for shady elites and illegal financial businesses.

Thus, the task of protecting Dubai’s position as a prominent commercial center in the Middle East amid competition from regional competitors and international scrutiny became a goal to reach for the two brothers, and it appeared that they had to work on whitewashing their image first and then saving the city.

Sheikh Hamdan, the Crown Prince, has an attractive personality. He is the head of Dubai Marketing, based on the idea of “brilliance” and its ability to attract capital and millions of tourists. While Sheikh Maktoum is the key to Dubai as a financial market and was the leader of the major institutions in the state-run emirate.

He is the one who personally runs the campaign to sell shares to investors.

The two men rarely speak to the media, and even the Bloomberg interview intended with one of them in early September 2022 faced multiple obstacles.

However, on September 18, 2022, the American agency published a report entitled Dubai’s Future Is in the Hands of Two Very Different Princes, in which it said, “Sheikh Maktoum’s aim is to ensure Dubai’s meltdown of 2009, when it required a $20 billion bailout from Abu Dhabi, isn’t repeated.”

At the time, Sheikh Maktoum was in his early twenties, and Dubai teetered on the brink of default, “he turned to Al-Shaikh, the finance chief at the time, for a detailed walk-through of the financial situation.”

“He asked me to sit with him and run him through the numbers,” Al-Shaikh said. “He wanted to know where exactly the stress points were and what caused them.”

Bloomberg stated that “how Dubai navigates the next chapter will come down to the dynamic between the two brothers as Sheikh Hamdan eventually succeeds his father as the face of the city, while Sheikh Maktoum cements his role as the numbers man.”

Saudi Arabia poses another challenge; it is opening up “under millennial de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is also beginning to lure foreign talent that might normally have ended up in Dubai. by wanting to emulate Dubai as a magnet for foreign talent and investment.”

 

Haven for Criminals

Talent and investment are not the only things that distinguish Dubai. There is another dark side under the rule of the two brothers; Dubai has become a haven for Russian oligarchs, the group of wealthy businessmen, parliamentarians, and officers who emerged quickly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and this name re-emerged strongly after being targeted by America and Europe with harsh sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine.

On March 17, 2022, the New York Times revealed that Dubai hosts more than 4,000 Russian companies operating in the sectors of infrastructure, real estate, industry, food, ports, aviation, and petrochemicals.

Many of these companies follow Russian oligarchs who went to the Gulf state even before the Ukraine war broke out.

The American newspaper stated that the UAE accounts for 55 percent of Russia’s foreign trade, and is the first Arab destination for Russian investments, as it includes about 90 percent of Russia’s investments in Arab countries.

The Russian government assured the oligarchs that their money would be safe in the UAE, according to the magazine.

One of the most famous oligarchs who sought refuge in Dubai was Ruslan Baisarov, a Russian businessman with close ties to Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This is in addition to Alexander Borodai, who became the prime minister of the Ukrainian region of Donetsk, which declared unilateral separation in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time.

Alhurra American website stated, on March 27, that there was widespread news among real estate brokers in Dubai that the billionaire former owner of the English football club, Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, is looking for a luxury property in the Gulf.

Speaking of Russian oligarchs, Robert Barrington, a professor at the Center for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex, said that they represent a back row of two to three thousand people.

He added to AFP on March 14 that the oligarchs are also very wealthy and are all linked to and supported by the Putin regime.

Thus, the presence of this suspicious elite did not go unnoticed and exposed the city to harsh criticism. Moreover, it made it among the areas required to be sanctioned.

 

Penalties Await

What Hamdan and Maktoum, the sons of the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid, overlooked, is that the emirate is on the brink of a cliff and faces the possibility of being subject to international sanctions.

The Spanish Publico announced a letter sent by the European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Mairead McGuinness, to the director of the non-governmental organization Transparency International in the European Union.

On October 29, 2022, she said that Brussels (the headquarters of the European Union) will soon propose to the European Parliament and Council to add the UAE, specifically the city of Dubai, to the list of third countries with a high degree of risk.

The Spanish newspaper pointed out that the expected European move falls within the reservation of the UAE, as it is one of the largest countries in the world receiving wealthy Russians (oligarchs) and their money after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

Even Dubai has become a threat to the UAE as a whole, as The Guardian reported on June 11, 2022, that sanctions should be imposed on the UAE unless it provides assistance to countries that seek the assets of the oligarchy.

The newspaper reported that members of the European Parliament submitted a letter to the Commissioner for Financial Services, Mairead McGuinness, demanding that the UAE be included in the list of third countries that pose a serious threat to the financial system.

On October 29, 2019, France’s Channel 2 broadcast an investigative report entitled “Cash Investigation” on drug money laundering.

The investigation revealed laundering operations worth millions of euros from the cannabis trade in France, with estimates reaching about one billion euros ($1.1 billion) annually.

The French report indicated that “drug money is transferred in cash from France to Morocco and Belgium and ends in Dubai, where it is placed in multiple Emirati banks, to be entered into the international banking system in the form of investments or regular transfers.”

The French channel’s investigation proved that “a network of companies operating in Dubai is complicit in laundering dirty money from drug smuggling, and deals without embarrassment with the lords of the death trade in the world.”

It indicated that the UAE authorities, who have a law to combat money smuggling and laundering, turn a blind eye to the activities of these suspicious companies.