Dubai: Trapped (1)

On Australia Day 2009, Australian property executive Marcus Lee was thrown into a seething, violent Dubai jail and nearly died. Nine months later he emerged accused of a crime he says he never committed. Despite his confidence of innocence and the wholesale lack of compelling evidence against him it took the better part of five years, trapped in Dubai, to shake the charge and the threat of a much longer prison stretch and get back to Australia. During that time he lost his house, his step-father, his grandmother and couldn’t return for their funerals. During much of that time Marcus and Julie Lee permitted Foreign Correspondent to follow their paralysing plight. Now they’re clear of Dubai and back home, they’re free to tell their story. They were locked in Dubai’s archaic and sclerotic court system – the same system that’s jailed foreigners for overt expressions of affection and rape victims ahead of their assailants. But the Lees were fighting accusations that he was part of a multi-million dollar sting involving a prize waterfront property. In Dubai financial crime is considered among the worst. Even bouncing a cheque equals prison time. Marcus Lee was implicated by authorities in a highly contentious deal involving his boss at Dubai developer Nakheel, Australian Matt Joyce, another Australian businessman named Angus Reed and well known Australian property developer Sunland. Lee, Joyce and Reed were accused of fleecing Sunland of 14 million dollars when it bought a prize chunk of the massive Dubai Waterfront development. While Dubai authorities were tenacious in their pursuit of the three it turns out Sunland was propelling much of the legal action that kept Lee and Joyce pinned down in Dubai for years. Legal action that ultimately failed and that even drew stinging criticism from a senior Australian court. In the end Marcus Lee was collateral damage in a brawl between property developers. Part 1 of this Foreign Correspondent spe