Brit man one of thousands stuck in Dubai homelessness nightmare

Jonathan Castle, 59 was born in London but raised in Thurso, near Caithness in the far North of Scotland. He made the move to Dubai (like 240,000 other Brits) in 2002 lured by high wages and glamorous living.

Until 2010 Jonathan was a successful copywriter in an upscale UAE advertising agency. Like a lot of expats in Dubai, Jonathan received constant phone calls from banks offering him loans. He allowed himself to be caught up in the ‘Dubai lifestyle’ and accepted some credit cards from Emirates NBD Bank; too many as it turned out. Jonathan fell behind with payments, and then the unpleasant side of the Dubai loan business began to invade his life.

Jonathan cut back on his lifestyle; rarely eating out, he sold his car and moved to a cheaper part of the city. It was not enough for him to meet his payments and in Dubai, unlike in most countries, debt is not a civil matter, it is a criminal offence punishable by substantial jail time.

UAE banks are notorious for their unwillingness to negotiate. Why should they when they can threaten debtors with years in a hellish desert jail? As Abdulfattah Sharaf (HSBC country head) openly says, “Jailing debtors in the UAE remains an effective way for banks to retrieve bad loans. People immediately get people to come and bail them out, and get the money to us”.

So the nightmare began. Debt collectors began to call him on the phone. Despite Jonathan’s pleas to restructure his loan, they refused, becoming more angry and aggressive: “You filthy defaulter. this my country. Give me my money and go home to your country” Jonathan recalls being told by one collector, “the stress was horrendous. They cursed, insulted me and constantly threatened me with jail, explicitly frightening me with how I would be raped and beaten during my sentence, which would be for years, not months.”

Jonathan is subsisting now on friends’ kindness. “Sooner or later I will outstay my generous friends’ goodwill,” he tells us. “I do a week here, and a week there, staying with different people in rotation. But time is running out. My friends are gradually moving from Dubai and when that happens I’ll be on the street like so many others. What new friend would want a 60 year old man to live on their couch?””