EXCLUSIVE: As Lee Andrews remains in a Dubai jail, Wolfgang Douglas, the son of the formerly jailed Albert Douglas, has shed light on his dad’s heinous ordeal – and the terror of weeping businessmen now trapped in the once glittering UAE city
In February 2019, Wolfgang Douglas received a chilling phone call from his father, Albert Douglas, after 10 days of radio silence. The family’s worst fears were confirmed – Albert had been captured while trying to flee Dubai, and subjected to abuse that traumatised him for life.
Six years ago, 63-year-old businessman Albert, who’d once dined with the city’s elite, claims he was snatched and stripped by UAE guards close to the border with Oman and taken to an undisclosed location with a bag over his face. He had been attempting a desperate bid for freedom after being arrested and detained in August 2019, accused of accruing debts incurred by a firm operated by his family member, which he had no involvement in.
In the two years before his escape attempt, Albert says he was blackmailed on a daily basis and faced complete financial ruin. It’s been alleged that accusers used connections known as “wasta” to pile pressure on police to intimidate Albert, while officers allegedly helped to fabricate charges against him.
Hounded by threats from creditors and fearing he stood no chance against a “rigged” system, Albert felt he had no choice but to try his chances in Oman, while he was on bail pending a court date. Following his capture, Albert was allegedly beaten and tortured for a number of days in a filthy cell, fearing for his life.
Thus began a harrowing five-year ordeal, during which Albert was wrongfully imprisoned for debts totalling £2.5 million, pursued by creditors who accused him of bouncing cheques. Left to rot behind the bars of infamous UAE jails, including Al Ain and then Al-Awir prison, nicknamed ‘Dubai’s Alcatraz’, Albert, who has since been exonerated by the UN, allegedly endured the torment of seeing his fellow inmates abused appallingly while suffering through hellish conditions.
The West London grandfather said he was beaten when he asked for his heart medication, and forced to drink from the communal toilet after being deprived of food and drink. He says he was kicked repeatedly in the head while under interrogation, and, as per the UN report, “physically and mentally tortured to force him to sign a confession” at Bur Dubai Police Station over the course of several nights, which he refused to do.
Tragically, Albert, who was allegedly struck on the head by Al Ain guards until he “lost consciousness”, says he even witnessed rapes and deaths by suicide. Albert’s horrifying ordeal has now been plunged back into the spotlight after Katie Price’s husband Lee Andrews was accused of copying his story to spin into his own “web of lies”.
Two weeks ago, Katie, 48, told Instagram followers how her husband of just six months had been “kidnapped” and bundled into a van, with the media personality claiming he was hooded with his hands tied behind his back during their final FaceTime call. It has since emerged that Lee, 43, was simply being held in a local jail regarding a routine, private civil matter.
It’s now emerged that Lee could be behind bars for several more weeks following repoets that he was set to be freed on Monday. “To be released, Lee will have to pay over £100,000,” a source said. But there likely won’t be much sympathy from Albert’s family.
While Albert returned safely home to his family at Christmastime, the scars still linger. Meanwhile, Wolfgang remains haunted by the memory of frantically working to secure his father’s release in an ordeal that saw him forced to step up as the “head of multiple families”, all while fighting against what he describes as a “dictatorship”.
Now, Wolfgang says his millionaire father is far from alone in cases of “financial entrapment” in Dubai, telling the Mirror how he’s had to field countless tearful calls from fellow businessmen and women trapped in what he describes as an “open air prison”. Their cries for help bring back terrible memories, making Lee’s disputed claims all the more infuriating.
Speaking with the Mirror, Wolfgang lashed out at “fakie” Lee. He believes Katie’s husband is a “conman” who has taken pieces of his father’s horrific story and used it as his own. Wolfgang, who runs an investment office focused on asset liquidation, now lives in South Kensington but previously lived in Dubai for 12 years.
A vocal advocate of the Romani-Gypsy Movement, Wolfgang says he initially moved to the influencer capital due to being “persecuted as an ethnic minority” in the UK. He remembered: “There was real money to be made in the boom days of Dubai, and you know that that draconian system suited us.”
While initially a lucrative move, Wolfgang, Albert and their family soon saw beneath the glitzy sheen of the UAE city. “There is no free speech. With Dubai, it could be raining outside, but if it’s bad for business, Sheikh Mohammed will say, ‘No, it’s sunny, it is not raining, and anyone who says it’s raining, we’re going to send you to jail’.”
Wolfgang pointed to when drones struck the Jebel Ali Port in March this year, as well as the airport. Witnesses were forbidden to take photos and videos. “They were restricted from telling the truth. In the UAE, you have no human rights, no free speech,” said Wolfgang.
Wolfgang has also seen the devastation of financial entrapment up close, with the justice system showing little mercy for those unable to pay debts or repay loans. As explained by Detained in Dubai, the UAE has a “unique” legal landscape in that accusations of financial crime, from breaches of trust to embezzlement, are “alarmingly common”.
The punishments for individuals and businesses alike can be steep. Standard debt, such as unpaid credit cards or personal loans, is no longer treated as a criminal offence; however, a creditor has the power to use the civil courts to subject debtors to jail sentences, heavy fines, or an indefinite travel ban.
Unfortunately, it’s been alleged that those making accusations may have ulterior motives in mind. The organisation warns: “In the UAE, financial disputes frequently escalate into criminal cases, often used as a weapon to force settlements, seize assets, or eliminate business rivals.”
A hub of global commerce, Dubai has long attracted entrepreneurs from overseas looking to make a name for themselves. But expatriates are warned that, should they fall out of favour with the Emirates, whether that be through civil disputes or economic downturn, they could find themselves in a very vulnerable position.
According to Detained in Dubai, Americans are now especially vulnerable in the supposedly safe and modern metropolis, amid turmoil such as “the world economic crisis, COVID, and Iran’s attack on the UAE.” Meanwhile, those unable to pay potentially hefty fines may find themselves stuck in a truly hellish situation where, in Wolfgang’s words, the system is “rigged” and “broken by design”.
There have been cases where, faced with travel bans, foreigners trapped in Dubai have been left wiped out by fines, unable to work, and left to fend for themselves on the streets in a place where homelessness is also punishable, thus entering into a bleak and unrelenting cycle.
According to Wolfgang, “What they do is they ask for security cheques that run into millions and millions of pounds. Then they put you in a position through non-payment where you stop working, or you stop supplying materials, and then they extort you to continue, otherwise they’ll bank these security cheques. Unless you’ve got millions and billions of pounds of liquid money, they bounce, but that’s got nothing to do with the inability to pay debt.”
Wolfgang, who alongside his father has been exonerated of any wrongdoing, shared how they had to spend some four million pounds worth of litigation over a near five-year period. They sought to prove torture and financial entrapment in chambers at the United Nations (UN) – “the highest levels of world human rights councils”.
When fighting for his father’s freedom, Wolfgang, who remains in touch with the UAE Royal Family, says he’s had to throw himself into everything “from lobbying to bribing”, forced to “work within the draconian legal framework” to keep a line of communication with the government open. It’s these efforts which, in Woflgang’s eyes, make Lee’s claims so insulting.
There was, Wolfgang says, “zero basis” to the case against his father, but in a place such as Dubai, he says innocence counts for little. Wolfgang, who has emerged from his ordeal “thick-skinned” and “battle-hardened”, explained: “Accusation is enough to put you in prison. You have to prove your innocence. They don’t have to prove your guilt; they only need to excuse you, and they’re used to winning.”
Foreigners who’ve gained an enviable amount of success, not to mention liquid assets, may find themselves a particular target in Dubai, Wolfgang warns. And the current liquidity crisis in the Gulf, comparable to the 2008 crash, is making things even more tense.
The ongoing conflict in Iran caused major economic shake-ups in Dubai, which Wolfgang compares to when the “music stops in musical chairs”. He explains: “It’s been a boom of no economic common sense. A property boom fueled by speculation and fueled by narrative rather than actual merit.” And it’s in these uncertain times that there are those who “abuse the powers that they have”.
Now, Wolfgang says, many fellow entrepreneurs have found themselves desperately trying to flee the market he describes as being in “freefall”, with his phone ringing “off the hook” with those seeking his advice. According to Wolfgang, in the first week of the Iran war alone, he received some 7,000 frantic phone calls from those looking to “exit the market as quickly as they could”.
Those Wolfgang has spoken to have reportedly found themselves in dismaying positions of financial entrapment, facing bounced security cheques and terror over an unpublished yet allegedly significant volume of travel bans.
He commented: “All the smart money’s left. And who’s in Dubai now are all those real estate agents that was making TikTok videos trying to convince people that the money’s not leaving, as the money was going.”
Wolfgang continued: “The people that are there are those sort of real estate TikTokers that can’t leave or businessmen on travel bans. It’s become a toxic environment. The UAE is a very toxic environment today.”
The Mirror has reached out to Dubai’s Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Lee Andrews for comment.
Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com
