British MPs and peers have written to foreign secretary David Lammy urging him to impose Magnitsky-style sanctions on Dubai officials over the long-running detention of UK national Ryan Cornelius.
Cornelius, who along with three other expatriates was convicted in 2011 of defrauding Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), has been detained in the Gulf emirate for more than 16 years on charges that the letter describes as “dubious”.
“We urge you to take immediate and decisive action, including the imposition of Magnitsky sanctions on those responsible for his continued imprisonment,” says the letter, seen by the Financial Times.
The letter’s signatories include former Conservative party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy.
Magnitsky sanctions target those responsible for human rights violations or corruption. They were named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after alleging that officials were involved in tax fraud.
Such sanctions would seek to freeze the assets and bar entry into the UK of Mohammed al-Shaibani, DIB’s chair and a senior government official, whom the family accused of extending Cornelius’s detention, given the bank’s role in increasing his prison sentence.
Shaibani referred Financial Times’ enquiries on the matter to the Dubai government, which denied the allegation.
The letter, dated March 13, is the latest part of a campaign to secure the release of Cornelius, 70, whose health is worsening.
At the end of their sentences in 2018, a judge extended the imprisonment of Cornelius and his fellow inmates by 20 years in response to an application by DIB.
The extension was made through the retroactive use of a 2009 law that permits detention for non-payment of fraudulent gains from state-related entities. The offence took place before the law was passed.
The letter says that some of Cornelius’s assets “seized” by DIB, which had been deemed “worthless” in the original 2010 trial, have been turned into a luxury real estate project by a state-related developer, Meraas, as the city’s property boom continues.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2022 ruled that Cornelius’s detention was arbitrary and a violation of international law.
The Dubai government said there was “no basis” for any sanctions.
“The fact of the matter is, Mr Cornelius and (co-defendant) Mr [Charles] Ridley’s criminal and civil cases have been dealt with properly by independent judges in both Dubai and in London,” it said. They were ordered and have yet to repay $432mn to the bank, it added.
DIB said it had acted “properly” and “in accordance with applicable laws at all times”.
Relatives of Cornelius, who have called for clemency from the Dubai ruler, said the UK Foreign Office had begun to take more proactive attempts to secure his release during Lord David Cameron’s tenure as foreign secretary under the previous Conservative government.
However, bilateral relations with the United Arab Emirates soured last year after the UK blocked a UAE-backed fund from acquiring the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
The UAE’s role in Sudan, where it is accused of supporting one side in the civil war, has proved an additional irritant to relations. The UAE denies the charge.
As Labour seeks to boost economic growth, the UK has been striving to improve ties with the UAE, of which Dubai is the commercial hub. Both Lammy and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer have visited the UAE, which in recent years has been a major investor in the UK.
The FCDO said the foreign secretary last discussed the case with his UAE counterpart last December and took any reports of human rights violations “very seriously”.
A UAE official said: “In line with international standards, the UAE has stringent laws, regulations and procedures in place to ensure the physical and psychological wellbeing of detainees in its prisons.”
