Word: dubai
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...Dubai's rise had been decades in the making, but the property market really exploded following a 2003 law change that made it easier for foreigners to own land. With credit cheap and readily available, no income tax, and many more sunshine hours than Britain or Russia, Dubai attracted a new wave of Europeans, who arrived with big hopes and little understanding of Muslim values. In one infamous culture clash, two Britons were imprisoned for having sex on a public beach and insulting police officers after a drunken Friday brunch...
...pictures of Dubai...
...real estate, and the property frenzy was soon dragging in locals and newcomers alike. Nightclub promoters became fund managers overnight, simply by collecting money from their pub mates back home. "It's not rocket science," says Martin Rumney, a 44-year-old former golf instructor from Britain turned Dubai real estate agent. "This is pretty easy money. You just have to be a people person...
Nigel Knight, a 45-year-old carpenter from Britain, started a lobbying group of disgruntled Dubai investors after he found that the developer of a villa he'd bought near the future site of Dubailand wasn't depositing his money in an escrow account reserved for construction funds. He suspects his and other investors' money was used by the developer to purchase more land and then sell off more units without ever starting construction at a single site. "It seems to be some kind of Ponzi scheme," he says. What's worse, he then discovered that the company may have...
...company is declaring bankruptcy, he says, and security guards recently prevented him from removing furniture from his office because of a rent dispute with the landlord. A local bank keeps calling to ask for the whereabouts of a former employee, a male nurse from Edinburgh who came to Dubai, hit the nightclub scene, bought a Porsche convertible, and then fled home after a week on the job, leaving about $115,000 in debt. "What were [they] thinking, loaning ?80,000 to a 24-year-old with no stable job who'd been in the country just eight weeks?" asks Mohamed...