Indian expat in Dubai charged with leaking company secrets acquitted

Dubai: The Dubai Court of First Instance has cleared an Indian engineer of charges that he had leaked his company’s secrets after his Dubai employer filed a case against him for lodging a labour complaint.

The 34-year-old Indian engineer was charged with leaking his company’s project design with assistance from another 27-year-old Indian engineer.

The Indian engineer’s lawyer Mohammad Al Redha of Al Redha Advocates and Legal Consultants told judges that the company fabricated the story after his client resigned in 2020 and lodged a labour complaint to get his end-of-service benefits totalling Dh38,081. “My client filed a labour complaint on January 1, 2020 to get his dues and the court ordered the company to pay it. The company then lodged this case because my client had the courage to file a labour complaint,” Al Redha said in his defence presented to Dubai Courts.

An official in the company testified the Indian engineer left the company in January 2020 due to some violations but he was in contact with the second defendant who replaced the defendant’s position.

The company’s official said that the replacement emailed engineering design files belonging to the company to the Indian engineer who intended to gain privately from the deal.

According to Al Redha, his client joined the company — which specialised in metering and control systems — in 2018 and resigned in October 2019. “He was under the notice period working with the other engineer who was appointed in his position. After the notice period, he was surprised when his replacement resent files that my client emailed to him earlier when he was still working with the company. He felt something was fishy when he received the emails,” added Al Redha.

He said that the company even sacked the replacement engineer two months later and sent him back to his home country in March 2020. “It’s clear the case was fabricated to implicate my client. He had possessed these designs before and made no attempt to get hold of them after he resigned,” added Al Redha.

The acquittal of the two Indian engineers was upheld by the Dubai Court of Appeal.