Australia Backs Convicted Matt Joyce and Marcus Lee in Dubai Appeals Court
Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has announced on national TV that the Aussie government will be extending "strenuous consular representations" to real estate exec Matt Joyce, who is currently facing a decade-long imprisonment sentence in Dubai.
"But the substance of the case has got to be a matter pursued by their legal representation," he told ABC news.
"Bear in mind that we don't fight cases for people in the courts of other countries. What we can do is talk to the government about due process," he also said during the interview.
Matt Joyce, a property exec who has been on house arrest since 2009, would be facing the maximum jail time sentence in Dubai, after he was convicted guilty of receiving $6 million worth of bribe during the negotiations for the collapsed Sunland-Dubai Waterfront land sale. He was also fined AU $25 million.
On the other hand, his junior colleague, Marcus Lee, was exonerated from the bribery charges. Another colleague, Angus Reed, who had been tried in absentia, was given the same 10-year jail sentence by the Dubai court.
Sunland executive David Brown had previously filed charges against Joyce and Reed in the Victorian Supreme court, alleging that Reed's company "Prudentia" has reserved the rights to develop D17, a plot of land in Dubai which is being sold by Dubai government-owned Nakheel Properties.
He claimed that the two had persuaded him to pay up AU $12 million dollar consultancy fee to Prudentia so Sunland can acquire the land. However, the Victorian court had ruled that Joyce and Reed never duped Brown into the deal and it was in fact Sunland that was "desperate" to obtain D17 and was willing to pay off Prudentia to get sole developer rights to the land.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has also extended efforts to help acquit Joyce and has personally requested Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum to consider the ruling of the Victorian Supreme Court that "Sunland acted in willful disregard of known facts and for an ulterior purpose."
According to The Age, the Dubai court has deliberately ignored Ms. Gillard's plea, refusing to take into account Australian court documents that proved that Brown had confessed to making false statements to Dubai officials.