Dubai: Six guards lost their appeals and will be jailed for three years each for abusing their job positions at a money transfer company and stealing Dh1.2 million in cash from an armoured truck.

The six Sri Lankan guards and their two countrymen cleaners conspired and decided to distract their co-workers while transporting moneybags from different commercial establishments in Dubai in May 2017.

The eight men, aged between 22 and 39, were collecting the proceeds from different outlets that their employers had been tasked to transport in the armoured truck to a local bank in Dubai between May 6 and May 10.

Dubai Police’s operations room received a report that Dh1.2 million had been stolen from an armoured truck from near one of the Deira metro stations around 1pm.

In November, the Dubai Court of First Instance convicted the six guards of abusing their jobs and stealing the Dh1.2 million.

One of the two cleaners was jailed for one year for abetment and keeping the stolen cash with him. The other one was acquitted.

The defendants appealed the primary verdict and asked the Appeal Court to reduce their punishment.

Prosecutors also appealed the verdict and sought to have the punishment stiffened.

Presiding judge Saeed Salem Bin Sarm rejected the defendants’ appeals and upheld the primary verdict.

According to the appellate ruling, the six defendants [guards] were ordered to repay Dh266,000 jointly to the money transfer company and fined them Dh1.2 million as well.

Presiding judge Bin Sarm also upheld the one-year imprisonment of the convicted cleaner. The innocent one also had his acquittal upheld.

The convicts will be deported following the completion of their punishments.

The defendants had pleaded guilty and admitted that they had stolen the cash.

A police lieutenant said the accused tricked one of the truck’s drivers to open the armoured truck’s door and took the moneybags and disappeared.

“CCTV cameras exposed the suspects carrying out the heist … they fled the spot in taxis. Preliminary investigation exposed that the suspects were hiding in a flat in Al Rashidiya. They had rented out that flat to use it as their hideout following the pre-planned theft. We raided the flat and apprehended some of the defendants and the rest were arrested later. One of them remains at large. The suspects had divided the money among themselves,” the lieutenant said.

The appellate ruling remains subject to appeal before the Cassation Court.