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The rumours swirling around Dubai’s current high profile anti-corruption sweep are just that: rumours.
For justice to be done, authorities must work through an exhaustive, multi-phase, multi-agency process that eventually punishes the guilty and clears the innocent.
Phase one requires forensic examination of companies’ and individuals’ incomes, expenditures, balance sheets and assets.
Reliable sources have told Arabian Business that this process began as far back as 2004, and have been ongoing ever since through the office of Dubai’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
Nobody has been given immunity or preferential treatment according to their status, although investigations were rightly conducted discreetly and privately so that companies and individuals were not damaged at a stage when the law requires everybody to be judged innocent until proven guilty.
Investigations have thrown up several high profile names, but this does not make any of them guilty. It is the job of Dubai prosecution officials to work with CID to draw together evidence that can be presented to the court.
Even those arrested within the past few weeks must face trial to establish to the satisfaction of the court that they have committed crimes and must be punished.
This is the phase that we are about to enter, and it is vital that it is carried out with the rigour and professionalism that the CID and prosecutors have applied so far.
Corporate corruption crimes are notoriously difficult to bring to trial. You only have to look at the investigations into arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which date back over 20 years without any resolution in sight, to see how complex the issues can be.
But just because these trials will be difficult, and the complexity of evidence could lead them to taking years rather than weeks of month, the Dubai courts should not cut corners on the way to justice.
They must also show the same steely nerve demonstrated by police and prosecutors in assembling evidence against high profile individuals working for government-owned businesses. Justice must be blind to those that it presides over.
Inevitably, deals will be done to speed up the legal process. Even judges must sometimes be pragmatic, and accept plea bargains that spare the court thousands of hours of torturous testimony in return for immediate guilty pleas. Prosecutors, defence lawyers and judges should work together on these concessions.
This is dangerous territory. Pragmatism is an acceptable part of justice, but it must not be used as a cover for capitulation.
It is part of a defence lawyer’s toolkit to create as much complexity as possible on behalf of his clients – to make it look like a trial could be a massively expensive waste of everybody’s time.
Nobody yet knows which of the current crop of high profile defendants are innocent or guilty, and nobody should be hungry for instant justice.
It would be a travesty if this long-running investigation - which aims to stamp out corruption and leave Dubai with a gleaming reputation for probity - were to stumble during its trial and sentencing phase.
The public must be patient, and allow the justice system to follow up the excellent work of police and prosecutors.
It may take years before justice is finally seen to have been done, but the work will serve as a foundation for governance that should then survive for centuries.