Dubai princess paid more than €200,000 for fake Irish passport to help her escape, lawyer says

A Dubai princess who was seized trying to flee the sheikhdom in 2018 paid €200,000-€300,000 for a fake Irish passport to aid her escape, a human rights lawyer involved in her campaign for freedom has said.

Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum (37) tried to flee the country in 2018 but was detained by commandos in a boat off India.

Ms Latifa set out by a dinghy and jet ski, before arriving at a pre-purchased boat that was located at a point nearly 27km off the coast of Oman, according to an article published recently in the New Yorker magazine. The plan was then to sail to India or Sri Lanka, and Ms Latifa would use a fake Irish passport to fly to the US.

However, in footage released by the BBC in February 2021, she said she had been drugged during her escape attempt and taken back into detention.

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[ Dubai princess used fake Irish passport during 2018 escape attempt ]

David Haigh, a UK-based human rights lawyer, who was part of Ms Latifa’s legal team and of the Free Latifa campaign, said fake passports were a “very big industry” in Dubai, with Irish passports, in particular, deemed one of the most sought after.

Ms Latifa’s fake Irish passport, an image of which was seen by The Irish Times, has a picture of the Dubai princess, with the name Justina Louise Coiley and Antrim as the place of birth. The passport expired in 2019 and the date of birth was the same year in which Ms Latifa was born: 1983.

“I remember when Latifa said she had this fake passport, I asked her how much she paid for it, and she said it was between €200,000 or €300,000. Crazy money. I understand that you could buy them for €30,000 to €40,000. Like everything else in her bid for freedom, she was taken advantage of significantly,” Mr Haigh said.

“The passport is a real kind of passport, but the picture is of the person who paid for it, not the person whose name it is. I wasn’t involved in her acquiring it, but she paid a considerable amount more than the so-called going rate, as it were.”

Gardaí familiar with organised crime investigations said it was impossible to put a precise figure on the cost of a fraudulently-obtained but genuine Irish passport, though they usually cost tens of thousands of euro.

“It depends what the person is willing to pay for it and who that person is,” said one source. “If they’re high profile that might mean a greater chance of being caught and so the cost may be higher.”

High-risk circumstances included cases where the fraudulent passport was likely to be come to the attention of the authorities at some point or if the person seeking the passport was especially vulnerable, garda sources said.

Mr Haigh said many women trying to leave Dubai have only illegal routes due to male guardianship rules, which he advises against. The biggest issue, he said, was vulnerable people being exploited by criminal gangs.

“It is something that needs some light shone on it because it’s not about the people buying them – they are the victims – it is about the people selling them when they know they don’t work,” he said.

Mr Haigh, a vocal critic of Dubai, was convicted by a Dubai court in 2015 of embezzling nearly £4 million (€4.6 million) from his former employer, private-equity firm GFH Capital that owned Leeds United at the time.

[ Princess Latifa pictured ‘on holiday’ in Spain in Instagram post ]

The Yorkshire-born solicitor, businessman and activist – a former managing director of Leeds United – has maintained his innocence and said he experienced abuse and torture during nearly two years in a Dubai prison.

He was released in 2016 and declared bankrupt in 2020 after a British court ordered him to repay the money.

Asked about the Ms Latifa’s use of a fake Irish passport, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it did not comment on specific cases but is “well informed of all emerging threats, challenges and changes in the global fraud space”.

A spokesman said it has “successfully preserved the integrity and international reputation of the Irish passport”, and that the passport service has made “significant investment” in recent years on counter-fraud measures.

Former president of Ireland Mary Robinson became embroiled in Ms Latifa’s case after she attended a lunch with the princess and the princess’s family in December 2018 amid increasing international concern for Ms Latifa’s welfare. Ms Robinson has since said her role in the controversy was her biggest mistake.