André Gauthier has finally come home after years in and out of Dubai jail, one attempt to escape, and being embattled by a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme,
Gauthier, a geologist who encountered years of legal tussle after he allegedly uncovered fraud in a gold company, said recently that he was in a Dubai hotel last week when he got a call from authorities who told him he could leave United Arab Emirates.
Every criminal charge against him was dropped last June but it took almost a year to obtain parallel civil cases dismissal and for Dubai authorities to negotiate his release.
During a phone interview from Quebec City, he said: “It was Day 328 that I’d been waiting for that call.
“I don’t have to tell you, I didn’t sleep that night.”
The 67-year-old Geologist said he was first apprehended in 2015 after he informed authorities in the United Arab Emirates of irregular dealings in gold-trading company Gold AE.
Gauthier and his lawyer said he was made a scapegoat in the $30-million fraud case after the authentic perpetrators left the country and the investors of the company filed complaints against him.
Gauthier said the hardest part about his difficulty was feeling unheard. He said: “You think you’re doing the right thing by whistleblowing something and bringing it to the authorities, and bringing it to the leadership of the company.
“(You feel) like you’re doing all this for nothing, basically because nobody wanted to solve it.”
The low point was when Gauthier, who was facing around 70 criminal charges, attempted to flee to Oman in 2019 but was intercepted and jailed. That was the only time his faith in his release declined.
He said: “I just sent a message to my son, my wife and my daughter to say that they better be forgetting me because with what I had in front of me, I don’t know when or if I would be back.”
United Kingdom-based lawyer, Radha Stirling praised the government of Canada for making an unflinching diplomatic effort to get her client released, and Gauthier’s family for fighting tirelessly for his release.
In a recent phone interview, she said: “I think the Canadian government’s done a good job and set a very good example to other countries on how this can be done.”
Her criticisms were that it took too long to get his freedom and the real perpetrators of the case have not been brought to justice.
Stirling said she felt foreign governments need to do more to stand up to the U.A.E. government.
She said: “These money-laundering scams in the U.A.E. are going on all the time and we’re getting more and more, and they’re targeting Canadian investors and American investors, and we’re turning a blind eye to this kind of abuse.”
Gauthier made it known his father died in Quebec during his detention, and he all his money fighting his cases.
Gauthier who is at home quarantining with his wife said he would spend the next few weeks and months procuring his driver’s licence and health insurance, and that he would visit his extended family in Quebec’s Saguenay region. He is also interested in getting back into the mining industry.
He passed on a message to the families of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the two Canadians that have been detained in China in a clear retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, telling them not to give up.
He said: “I can tell those families it’s important to keep the faith that the government will try to find a solution.
“How long will it take, unfortunately it’s a file that’s much more complicated than mine, but they have to keep the hope that everything will work out in a reasonable time frame.”
