Theft Article: Introduction

Theft under the UAE laws is a crime and is regulated by Federal Law No. 3 for the year 1987 on passing Penal code. Theft can only be committed on real movable property, which has value, monetary or otherwise, that belongs to another. Property is defined in the Civil Transactions Law of the UAE as anything that you can take under your custody. However, there are similar crimes to theft, but they can be committed on non-real movable properties, as thoughts, ideas, and intellectual property. Such crimes are regulated by different articles of law.

Like all crimes, it requires the presence of mens rea and actus rea. For theft to occur under the laws of the UAE, it must involve an involuntary handover of the object. In cases where the owner of the object, willingly hands over the object for safe keeping, and the keeper took it for himself then it is a crime of breach of trust since it does not satisfy the condition of an involuntary handover. In contrast, money handed over