oneworldtalk

August 8, 2009

While Australians languished in Dubai jails, a much bigger fish made fraudulent millions with impunity. This glamorous but treacherous spy is finally behind bars, writes Rick Feneley.

They call her the modern-day Mata Hari, a spy-turned-criminal who laundered fortunes from drug runners and arms dealers through Dubai's high-rise wonderland.

Alternatively, they have cast Malika Karoum as an innocent woman, a fugitive not from the law but from an abusive husband who maliciously defamed her - and concocted the whole spy-crime thriller - as part of a bitter custody battle for their young son.

Karoum - using her apparent cover as a real estate executive - did do some work on property developments within Dubai Waterfront, among other sites. She was accused of funnelling drug and arms money - including that of an Egyptian weapons dealer - into Dubai's property bubble, which burst spectacularly last year. Millions invested through her by criminal networks are said to have vanished.

While Joyce and Lee and other Australians languish in Dubai's jails, the Karoum story throws light on the way business is done in the Emirate. The sheikhdom is making a big show of cleaning up corruption in its property industry, but it showed no apparent interest in stopping Karoum. Indeed, Libbenga says, she ended up spying for the United Arab Emirates, too, and it offered her protection. She had also spied for Egypt.

Her old Dutch colleagues could well understand the analogy with the original Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, a seductress who became a double agent during World War I, working for both French and German spymasters.

Karoum joined the Dutch secret service in 2004, Revu says. Most of her work had concerned secret investigations of Islamic organisations in the Netherlands suspected of terrorist aid. She was sent to Dubai late in 2006 to investigate terrorist financing and money laundering to and from Dubai. Once there, she soon defected to her own cause: making money.