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Its glittering towers and tax-free wages lure thousands of British expats every year, but Dubai has long been known for attracting a less savoury clientele.
For more than a decade, drug traffickers, money launderers, fugitives and sanctions-dodgers have called the city home - often with the tacit support of the authorities.
Against this backdrop, the reported arrests of four of Scotland's most high-profile gangsters in Dubai in September prompted excitement among Western law enforcement.
Steven Lyons, Ross McGill, Stephen Jamieson and Steven Larwood are said to operate at the 'highest levels' of UK and international organised crime - and have been linked to an ongoing gang war that has seen a wave of firebombings and shootings in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Three of the men have since been released, though it is believed that Stephen Jamieson is still being held.
It is unclear as to whether he will be extradited, though the UAE's unprecedented decision to allow the extradition of top Kinahan gangster Sean McGovern to Ireland in May will give police some cause for hope.
However, experts have warned that, when it comes to Dubai's 'gangster crackdown', not all is as it seems, with officials targeting several high-profile kingpins while sparing many more.
They described the September arrests as a way to remove criminals who are deemed to have become too much of a threat to the city's reputation, without doing anything to tackle the more serious figures that continue to operate out of the public eye.
The attractions of Dubai for gang bosses are obvious. Given it has historically shunned judicial cooperation with Western authorities, they have been able to brazenly run their operations out of the city’s skyscrapers and luxury villas without fear of extradition.
Europol has described the city as a 'remote coordination hub' for Europe's drugs trade, with traffickers living openly and laundering their money through luxury goods and real estate.
Despite wielding extreme violence against rivals in Europe, Dubai's low crime rate is - ironically - a key attraction for kingpins, reducing the risk that they themselves will face attacks or theft.
For the rulers of Dubai - one of the UAE's seven emirates - the flow of dirty money propping up its growing economy and property market is an obvious attraction.
But according to Dr Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King's College London and an expert in the Middle East, this is only one reason for their tolerant approach to organised criminals.
'The UAE is trying to keep their jurisdiction as open as possible because that's their USP - they won't judge people based on who they are or how they made their money,' he told the Mail.
'They also welcome networks that are useful for statecraft - like some of the drug cartels they can use to generate influence in South America.
'But if groups are not useful, and the reputational cost of hosting them is too big, they'll clamp down.'
In October 2024, McGovern - the right-hand-man of Kinahan cartel leader Daniel Kinahan - was arrested on an extradition warrant from Dublin, accused of murder and being a leader of a criminal organisation.
The US Treasury calls the organised crime group a 'threat to the entire licit economy', with Washington slapping a $15million (£11million) bounty on the heads of its three leading members.
McGovern’s arrest in Dubai followed the extradition in July last year of Faissal Taghi to the Netherlands on drug trafficking and murder-related charges. Belgian drug lord Nordin El Hajjioui was sent back in handcuffs to Brussels in March of that year.
On Saturday, there were reports a relative of Daniel Kinahan had been blocked from entering the UAE last month.
While Daniel and his father Christy remain free, Dr Krieg believes they may now be considered more trouble than they're worth.
'I don't think the Kinahan cartel can exercise enough influence to make up for the reputational damage they cause,' he said.
Recent arrests may have called Dubai's reputation as a haven for global crime syndicates into question.
But the city's appeal remains strong, with police and European judicial sources citing its unique combination of luxury, strategic location and a legal environment that makes extradition difficult and money laundering relatively easy.
The UK-based Centre for the Study of Corruption said in August that there has been 'a large-scale shift in the global epicentre of dirty money networks to Dubai and Hong Kong'.
The UAE has been trying to show it has been cleaning up its act since being put on the 'grey list' by the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in 2022. It was then removed from the list two years later.
But Dr Krieg said it remains a hub of a range of 'illicit networks', including gold and oil smuggling, and various forms of money laundering.
'It has made itself into a place where you can easily transfer assets into other assets - people can rock up there with gold in their suitcases and sell it for cash with no questions asked,' he said.
'The reason the government has invested so heavily in crypto is that it makes it easier to bring diamonds or gold into the UAE and transfer it into digital currencies. '
Dubai's other big continuing attraction is its cash economy, where criminals can quickly get rid of dirty money that would be hard to spend in Europe.
The city's ancestral 'hawala' banking system, which allows cash to be transferred without money actually moving, has allowed drug lords to invest heavily in property and other high-end businesses there with little trace.
While Dubai is less rich in oil than its neighbours, transactions in its booming property market hit a record $139billion (£103billion) in 2022.
With homes in its glitziest neighbourhoods selling for more than $10million, French fugitive Tarik 'The Bison' Kerbouci set himself up as an 'estate agent', according to a French judicial source.
Based on leaks of a property register, the Washington-based Centre for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) said he owned a villa and an apartment in the high-market Al Barsha and Al Hebiah areas.
Another figure to benefit is Daniel Kinahan's wife Caoimhe Robinson, who's been able to sell and let property worth millions despite international sanctions freezing her husband's assets.
This allegedly includes a mansion that was rented out for £20,000 a year before being sold for £4.3million, and a luxury villa with a swimming pool and a terrace overlooking a golf course that was sold last May for nearly £10million.
Ms Robinson, who famously wed her husband in a glitzy ceremony at the £1,000-a-night Burj Al Arab hotel in 2017, is not the target of any sanctions or arrest warrants and - unlike other members of the Kinahan family - is not a fugitive.
Dr Krieg believes the UAE will remain a hub for senior crime figures - but said they would have to justify their presence.
'The UAE wants to exercise influence and make itself indispensable,' he said.
'We know they've allowed oligarchs - some of whom are involved in organised crime - to settle there. The same goes for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
'But they will crack down on networks that cause more reputational damage than they are worth. '
Dubai may be less of a guaranteed refuge than it once was, but its blend of luxury, location and lax enforcement means it will remain an irresistible magnet for the world’s criminal elite... at least for now.