The banker who can't get out of Qatar | Hacker News Reader

The banker who can't get out of Qatar

ericellis.com

35 pointsjteo14 comments

Hopefully more stories like this get out, and people will refuse to do business in Qatar, without exceptional compensation for the perceived risk involved. When they see they're losing money they'll have to decide whether they want to stay in their old ways, or adapt and show respect for the fellow human beings.

From camel to Cadillac in a single generation....there is still a long ways to go in terms of human rights in that part of the world.

And certain other parts of the world only think they got it: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/802

"More than 60 foreign citizens representing 22 nationalities are under sentence of death in the United States of America (USA). In virtually every case, the arresting authorities failed to notify detained foreigners of their right to communicate with their consular representatives."

Are you comparing the Qatari legal/punitive system against the US system ? If so, you're either being incredibly naive, incredibly stupid, or just trolling. Anyone with half a brain would rather be arrested for a (percieved) crime in the US rather than a country such as Qatar. Read the orginal article carefully and see the kind of limbo that Proctor is in. One could argue that the link you posted is not even on topic.

Bahrain may have similar legal foundations as Qatar, but those are definitely two different countries. Someone standing up on a pedestal should probably know that.

Noted and corrected. Funny I made that mistake since I've lived close by in Dubai for a while and have relatives living and working in both Bahrain and Qatar.

You realize they were a sea-faring, international trading people for the last 800 years right? Forget the camel, and think dhow.

For every Westerner that gets this shitty treatment there are ten that go the Gulf, run up debt, abuse people's hospitality, and flee like cowards.

If that's the case then it shouldn't be as easy to run up the debt, treating people like this is completely unjustified and wrong. Why do they flee? Is it because of debtor prisons like in dubai? Is it because the legal system is corrupt? Is it because the banks lend out money to irresponsible people with no collateral?

Here is a guy who recently did business with the government of Iraq, selling them $85M worth of fake bomb detection equipment:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm

Arabs have seens waves and waves of such Western "businessmen", selling them sham products that kill or injure people, or wipe them out financially.

I wouldn't mind if the Iraqi government held Jim McCormick "hostage", until he was able to defend himself successfully in a court of law.

To imply this is some victimization perpetrated solely on Arabs is just wrong. Businessmen con governments out of money on a regular basis esp. in the United States. Here's one recent example.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/montgomery-2

If the person broke the law then you can punish them, if they didn't then you can change the law and say thanks for teaching me an important lesson never to do business with you again.

The use of force is not something that is thrown around lightly, and what if that guy thought what he was selling worked? I mean are we going to lock up all the homeopath people?

I don't understand why he can't just go to the British Embassy and have them take him out of the country. Or is that not how it works?

I think that issue is that the government claims there are legal cases against him, and the British government is wiping their hands of it claiming that they can't interfere until the legal issues are tied up. Though I think it's possible for him to stay at the embassy if he runs out of money and has no place to stay.

These are diplomatic issues. I don't think that the British government really has much leverage to apply pressure to Qatar. It's also possible that they don't do much in the way of action/applying pressure unless it becomes a major media event.

There was a media event a couple of years ago around a Canadian citizen that was detained in Mexico because her boss was a crook. Apparently they couldn't get/punish him so they grabbed her and claimed that she was implicit in the crime because her salary (~$30K IIRC) came out of the money that he cheated people out of (she was his secretary, IIRC).

The Canadian government was able to convince the Mexicans to allow her to serve her sentence in a Canadian prison. When she was in Canada I believe they waived her sentence, gave her community service instead, or something similar. This brought a lot of other people with similar issues to the forefront. Some of which had been trying to get the Canadian government to intervene for years, but they didn't get enough media coverage to warrant decisive action. I think that the number the CBC trotted out was ~120 similar cases of Canadian citizens detained in foreign countries for dubious crimes (or no claims of crime whatsoever).

I think that, in general, governments don't want to play the diplomacy game for these 'small gains' if they don't have to since diplomacy can be give-take in many cases. They are only forced to act to avoid losing face with the general public when a specific case becomes a media-storm.

[UPDATE] I guess I should mention that in the case of the woman in Mexico, her ex-boss even came forward to say that she had no knowledge of his crimes (for whatever that's worth, seeing-as the guy was a conman for all intents and purposes). Also, I can't remember of the money was her salary or a 'bonus' that he paid to her, but I'm pretty sure the amount of around $27K and she wasn't a rich woman, so I think it was her salary.

The simple answer is that the British Embassies are only really interested in holding ambassador's receptions and playing croquet; they're notorious all over the world for being absolutely no use whatsoever to a British taxpayer-voter in difficulty.

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