<p><a href="/en/afganistan/kabul" class="glossify-link">KABUL</a> (Pajhwok): With nearly 30 free trade zones, Dubai has emerged a haven for money laundering due to the lax regulatory oversight and customs enforcement, says global foreign policy think-tank.</p>
<p>Afghan warlords, Russian mobsters, Nigerian kleptocrats, European money launderers, Iranian sanctions-busters and East African gold smugglers run their illicit businesses through/from the UAE capital.</p>
<p>A damning 130-page report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shines a light on Dubai’s role in facilitating corruption and global illicit financial flows. It found wealth amassed through criminal behaviour being washed through the wealthy Gulf emirate.</p>
<p>The topics addressed by 10 experts on the Gulf economy include Dubai’s vulnerability to illicit financial flows, the emirate’s allure to luxury property market, how Emirati law enforcement allows kleptocrats and organised crime to thrive.</p>
<p>Different leaked documents, from the Panama Papers, for instance, show Dubai is a place where many people associated with criminal activity feel free to settle down with their families, manage their networks and engage in smuggling and money laundering.</p>
<p>Several other cities also offered havens for illicit gains and luxurious lifestyles, the report admitted, characterising Dubai as a huge magnet for dirty money.</p>
<p>“Dubai is just one of many criminal facilitation nodes throughout the <a href="/en/world" class="glossify-link">world</a> but addressing the emirate’s problematic role presents anticorruption and law enforcement practitioners and policymakers with particularly complex and delicate challenges.”</p>
<p>The lack of any domestic and international scrutiny and the absence of any <a href="/en/external" class="glossify-link">external</a> pressure are seen as one of the main reasons for Dubai’s allure of dirty money.</p>
<p>According to the report, Emirati elites are free to resist reforms that endanger their vested interests or their preferred political economic vision for Dubai and the UAE overall.</p>
<p>“Dubai’s role as a facilitator of corruption is unsustainable over the long term,” argue the authors, explaining that an economy predicated on continued international tolerance of the emirate’s permissive attitude toward many types of illicit activities would not continue forever.</p>
<p>In April, the report recalled, the UAE was placed under a year-long observation for its failure to stem money laundering and terrorist financing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The Paris-based watchdog found Abu Dhabi was failing to address the issue and was urged to take extra measures to avoid being put on an international watchlist.</p>
<p>At the start of the year, former Malaysian prime minister Najib Abdul Razaq allegedly urged Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed to conceal links to a multibillion-dollar corruption case in which he was implicated.</p>
<p>Part of what underpins Dubai’s prosperity is a steady stream of illicit proceeds generated by corruption and crime. The wealth has helped to fuel the emirate’s booming real estate market; enrich its bankers, moneychangers and business elites; and turn Dubai into a key gold trading hub.</p>
<p>One of the world’s largest gold hubs, Dubai is also a place to launder artisanally mined gold, especially from conflict-prone parts of East and Central Africa. Opaque business practices and regulatory loopholes allow this laundered gold to enter world markets on a massive scale.</p>
<p>mud</p>
