Dubai Civil Court rejects forgery challenge over $500,000 crypto transfer documents
A Dubai court dismissed a lawsuit seeking to contest five documents, including a $500,000 crypto receipt, as forged. The ruling found the challenge should have been raised during the original criminal case.
Dubai court rules forgery challenge on crypto documents came too late
The Dubai Civil Court of First Instance has thrown out a lawsuit brought by an individual and a company who sought to compel their opponents to produce originals of five documents, including a receipt recording a $500,000 cryptocurrency transfer. Google News UAE — Dubai reports that the plaintiffs intended to use those originals to contest the documents as forgeries, but the court found the claim inadmissible.
Among the documents in dispute were two receipts each referencing $500,000, an email attributed to the owner of the plaintiff company, and two invoices written in English. The plaintiffs maintained the documents contained false information and had been deployed against them in a prior criminal case.
According to court records, the defendants had submitted the contested documents before a criminal court, where a court-appointed expert committee examined and relied on them as evidence supporting the defendants' position. The plaintiffs, having failed to raise a forgery claim at that stage, subsequently filed the independent civil lawsuit seeking the originals as a preliminary step toward a formal forgery challenge.
The court rejected that approach outright. It ruled that an original forgery action is legally permissible only when a party fears a forged document may be used against them at some future point. Once a document has already been placed before a court and reviewed in the course of proceedings, the appropriate legal avenue is to allege forgery within those same proceedings — not through a separate lawsuit filed after the case has concluded.
The court noted that the plaintiffs themselves acknowledged the documents had already been submitted to the criminal court and scrutinised by an expert panel appointed in that matter. That acknowledgement, the ruling stated, meant the core condition for lodging an original forgery action was no longer satisfied.
The judgment further held that a party which fails to raise a forgery defence during the hearing of the underlying case cannot subsequently circumvent procedural rules by initiating an independent forgery lawsuit. Such a defence, the court stressed, must be presented before the tribunal actively hearing the dispute.
The court reinforced that the purpose of an original forgery action is protective and prospective — designed to shield parties from anticipated harm. Where a document has already been relied upon in legal proceedings, any challenge to its authenticity falls squarely within the jurisdiction of the court that handled that dispute, not a separate civil chamber.
Source: Google News UAE — Dubai