The Dubai Court of Misdemeanour yesterday postponed to November 23 hearing in a trial involving nine accused of embezzlement at real estate company Deyaar.

The court heard the testimony of Mohammed Mustafa Hussein, expert at the Financial Audit Department of Dubai Ruler's Court, and who compiled a report on the case. Hussein said the first defendant, ZS (American) had embezzled $6 million (Dh22m) from Deyaar.

The expert said the request by Deyaar to buy, via one of its affiliated companies, a villa project in Turkey was signed and approved by the board chairman rather than the rest of the members. Neither was the project presented to the board, he said.

Hussein said the project feasibility study was made by ZS and shown to the chairman only rather than the rest of the board members. He said he noticed that the date of the chairman's approval and that of the signing by ZS of the contract was the same.

He said the Turkish and UAE documents show that the value of the deal was $13m. Also the receipt given by the Turkish sellers shows they received the same amount. Meanwhile, the land department of Turkey has a cheque signed by ZS with a value of $6.530m.

Hussein said that by checking the accounts of the Deyaar-owned Dubai construction company, which bought the project, he found that $6m was transferred to the account of a banking company in Turkey upon instruction by ZS who signed the transfer. The money was to be then sent to an American company.

The expert said when he wrote the report he followed internationally-applied review standards.

On his informing of Dubai Financial Market about the violations in Deyaar, Hussein said before 2007, Deyaar was a limited liability company fully owned by Dubai Islamic Bank and was not listed on the DFM. But after Deyaar became a public joint stock company in 2007, Hussein said audit reports were sent to the company's board which took a host of measures against violating officials.

The expert answered queries by the defendants' lawyers, including ZS's lawyer Ali Shamsi who still has some questions.

Nine defendants are involved in the case: ZS, JK (India), SP (Lebanese), JM (Argentinean), HS (Palestine), JP (India), HS (Pakistan), JM (India) and NS (India). The nine have been charged with embezzling some Dh271m from the firm.

Hussein earlier said JK received commissions and was chosen by ZS to conduct media campaigns for Deyaar.

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