It seems to me, unless I missing something here, that the only source of information to me regardng escrow accounts and anything else regaarding our investment, is these forums and the Dubai biased media (anyone else notice that).
What I'm trying to find out is, is all our money in an escrow account as we started paying our developer nearly 2 and a half years ago and have only made one payment of late into their escrow account.
Our developer wont answer this questions, is there a way to find out?
This is something most investors is trying to figure out. Transparency is non-existent mostly because the majority of escrow accounts are supposedly empty. The instructions to the banks up to the fall of 2008 basically said they could remove money from the account for a lot of other reasons than for construction (marketing, administration, commission, paying for land etc. etc.). The only thing you can do unless the developer shows you papers and balance sheets of the account (yeah, right...) is to look in the registry at rpdubai.ae and see who's supposed to manage the escrow account and then contact them to confirm your payments are in the escrow account. But this is a mess, I would be surprised if you get any information apart from silence...
Apparently the banks have been instructed to no longer give the specific balance of investors that deposited their money straight into the escrow accounts. Why they have been instructed to no longer give out this info which they have to according to Law 8 of 2007, I have no idea. But it's probably a cover up from the governments side in an attempt to save Dubais face and not cause panic (or give people the chance to confirm how the escrow accounts have been abused).
In my case when I tried to find out what my balance was the only thing I got was -by word- that the money had been paid to the escrow account, neither verification on paper nor any kind of balance was given although this was specifically requested.
I guess even for this kind of thing you have to go to court. All while they're boasting about the transparency and how they claim they are continuously doing everything they can to improve transparency. Yeah, right...
Good luck!
