Omnious Bankers
I wrote a while back about my experiences in Dubai working for the Ominous Integrated Creative Consultants.

They did pay me in the end – only after about 6 weeks complaining to the UAE labour Authorities.

Banking in the UAE is a laugh. No one trusts each other, mainly because the whole place is built on greed corruption and lies. So standard practice is as follows:

1. You get sacked (very easy to do, very few laws to protect you)
2. The company is required by law to inform your bank
3. Your account is frozen
4. When your final salary is paid in it is marked as such
5. Any overdraft, loans, mortgages, credit cards, and car loans get paid off in their entirety

But hang on I hear you say – a months severance won’t cover all that. And how are you expected to survive and look for another job if the banks have hoovered up all your your money?

The answer from Dubai is simply this:

Fuck you.

Because no one trusts each other and they are all crooks, any debits or credits on your account prompt an instant text notification to your mobile. So at the ATM I would often feel my mobile buzz in my back pocket before the money was even out of the slot.

This week I got a text around 8am one morning to say roughly £7,500 had been paid in. They had deliberately waited this long so they could be sure the banks were waiting and I would not see the money - a months salary some holiday entitlement and some expenses to cover half the cost of my belongings being in storage for 6 months (while my fate was being decided). I then received a further rapid series of texts to tell me it had been taken straight back out (to pay my credit cards and car loan). Naturally none of this authorised by me (oh, and they want the full amount for the car loan, not just that months payment). This instantly made me a criminal in Dubai and put me on a no fly list. Any attempt to leave the country would see me flung in jail - like hundreds of others have been in the last few months. No joke. No exaggeration.

By the middle of May this year it was reported that 4,000 cars had been dumped at the airport. Many more are to be seen dotted around the city, covered in dust with a police notice on the windscreen. So the true total could be more like 6,000 by now.

This is why, like many others I had to flee with my family in the dead of night. I won’t see my cash and frankly I don’t give a shit. So long as the Ominous Integrated Creative Consultants don’t have it and I am safe in a democracy where laws are created with something more considered than a wave of one mans hand - then in my mind I’m very wealthy. The irony is as soon as I got back home I was contacted by one of the main Dubai headhunters offering me another job. But to wait 30 days for such an offer before my Visa being cancelled and the prospect of no pay that month raised the stakes way too high for me.

Duabi is broke, conservative estimates suggest their debts amount to 107% of their GDP. But still the banks lend. Most of the major construction projects have been put on hold, delayed or cancelled. But still new towers were springing up during my final months there - financed by lies, built by slaves. Who will occupy them is a mystery. The property market has collapsed, prices down by as much as 60%. There are 10,000 empty apartments yet still they build more. Jumeirah Beach Residence – one of the most popular places to live is like a ghost town now – you walk around at night and there are very few lights on in those apartments. Even the designer boutiques below are being boarded up. The population is shrinking rapidly. Expats make up around 80% of the population. Or at least they did until the bubble burst.

Within a decade, Dubai will be bought for a song by Russians, Chinese and most ironically wealthy Indians. Emirati’s will be back out in the desert sitting on carpets wondering just what the fuck went wrong. I’m afraid I can’t really muster much sympathy for them.

Banks are bastards but be thankful that at least in the West we have dragged them out of the dark ages.
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 13:25, 20 replies)

Absolute bunch of bastards.
I'm so glad you and your family are back safely in the UK. If just one person reads your blog and is put off moving there, you've helped. 20-20 hindsight is a wonderful thing, and looking back the package you were offered seemed to good to be true - and it was all bullshit.

Good luck getting back on your feet mate.

xxx
( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 13:36, closed)

cheers twinkle
thankfully people are being put off - I have had a fair amount of comments and emails from people who have indeed changed their plans about going there.

and thanks to some press coverage on my blog The Ominous Ones are being outed too. The more people who link to my blog: ominousdubai.blogspot.com/2009/06/burned-in-dubai.html from their own sites, blogs etc or include the term 'Ominous Integrated Creative Consultants' the hotter it will become for them

if anyone else needs help or advice... [email protected]

'Dubai. It's not worth it.'
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 13:47, closed)

Done - been on again and linked to it properly this time

( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 14:07, closed)

good girl!
*oggles boobs*
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 14:09, closed)

*jiggles*

( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 16:57, closed)

look its on wiki - it must be true!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ominous_integrated_creative_consultancy
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 23:32, closed)

wiki
it's been deleted now...
(twiceydrinker hmmm is it pint time?, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 12:09, closed)

*clicks*
If this doesn't win... well, something else will.

*clicks hard*
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 14:17, closed)

Almost right, except...
...Abi Dhabi is doing most of the bailing out, and still has absolutely fuckloads of oil money. So the Emiratis will still be top of the tree, it'll just be a bunch from a couple of hundred miles away.
(stalinism, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 15:50, closed)

nope entirely right i'm afraid
abu dhabi bailed them put to the tune of 8 billion dollars - that just brought them up to the figures i quoted.

the thing is though - all of the emirates hate each other. they only banded together in the first instance to prevent the west nicking their oil. but they HATE each other. i had to have two sets of business cards, one for our only real office - in dubai. and another for our 'abu dhabi office' which was no more than an address. if you are in dubai you wont touch an abu dhabi company and vice versa.

they only bailed them out to save face and are secretly becoming the owners of the few viable projects remaining.
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 20:46, closed)

My company does business
with a Dubai based company called i-mate - they used to be the leader in HTC and Windows Mobile based PDA's and we have a warranty contract with them.
They haven't paid us in almost 2 years, to the tune of around $150,000.
Since HTC dumped them, they've been reporting that they're almost broke and their new devices are fucking shit. We're getting out of the contract, but any attempt to sue is going to just cost us more money, so we're shit out of luck.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 16:29, closed)

I was out there a few times with an old employer
Behind the facade it is- as you say- a squalid medieval hellhole with no redeeming features.

Next to Switzerland, it is my least favourite place on earth.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 16:41, closed)

I saw your post about this before
And was pretty appalled then. I've forwarded it onto a site called Boing Boing, which amongst random posts about art, science, and general nonsense, is a big blog that's pretty hot on corporate fuckwittery.

I obviously can't guarantee they'll take up on it, but if they do, it'd be a shot in the arm for putting pressure on Ominous and the like. If nothing else, it'd bring to light how precarious an existence being abroad at the beck and call of a company like that can be.

Hope things begin to pick up for you from now on, mate.
( the_other_jeff_lebowski Croutons on my tits, Sat 18 Jul 2009, 18:48, closed)

Ominous Scum Sucking Bastards
I've not had experience of them directly other than having read your posts previous Mr Spimf and I'm sorry to hear that you've had this difficulty.

Let's get a couple of things straight, that you might be able to get on to your Dubai'n bank on the basis of.

1. If they issued you with a credit or debit card that contains either the VISA or Mastercard logo they're regulated in the conduct of the cards not by the laws of Dubai but by the scheme rules of VISA and Mastercard - drop me a line if you want a local contact there

2. Given that the actions of Omnia were performed on a Brit, by a Brit and that your contract of employment was executed (presumably?) in the UK if there's a cause of action then you could not unreasonably claim that a UK court (note: NOT a Dubai court) have jurisdiction - especially given the utterly poor character displayed by Booth and Fuckwad in Dubai.

The idea that these two wankstains, wastes of DNA and oxygen thieves can stick two-fingers up at the legal system is wholly injudicious and defeats the objects of natural justice.

FYI, I'm not a lawyer but it might be worth taking this approach to a legal-beagle. If you're in England / Wales it's possible to kick off a private prosecution in the absence of CPS deciding that they want to have something to do with it.
(MrHappy, Sun 19 Jul 2009, 4:10, closed)

sadly
the cards were issued by HSBC - HSBC UAE that is, and they are sadly a law unto themselves over there - literally.

your point about contacts is valid but the company were far too well versed in screwing people over - so the offer was made in the UK but the contract Visa's and all that malarky were drawn up in Dubai. If they left themselves open to UK employment law they simply could not exist.

this is worth a read...

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6716543.ece
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sun 19 Jul 2009, 14:11, closed)

Have you seen....
The Sunday Times Magazine today?
(Oil Slick, Sun 19 Jul 2009, 14:50, closed)

only the online version above

( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sun 19 Jul 2009, 15:14, closed)

Bah!
'Short attention span Sunday' led me to incompletely finish your posting.
(Oil Slick, Sun 19 Jul 2009, 19:16, closed)

Having read your previous post
and passing this onto a mate who had a job lined up in Dubai, and now this...

sufice to say he isn't going anymore. Cheers.
( SpankyHanky, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 15:31, closed)