Ebony & ivory

Gulf News today ran a press release from Al Fajer Properties saying that all its projects are on schedule.

They say they voluntarily asked for a construction audit to be carried out by a RERA-approved independent party.

Sounds boring I know, but stay with me.

The press release includes the information:

The results confirm that work on Phase 1 has neared 80 per cent completion and 15 per cent of construction has been completed on Phase 2 (including the Ebony and Ivory Towers) with work continuing.

That reference to Phase 2 is the important bit.

A week ago the UK newspaper The Independent ran an article headlined "Dubai property scandal claim emerges amid media blackout"

It's full of sensational accusations.

It claims that customers were misled into paying millions of dollars by the use of fake photographs, which showed construction of three buildings, purported to be Ebony 1, Ivory 1 and Ivory 2, up to the sixth storey. It says that the photographs were in fact of buildings on neighbouring plots and the three towers are actually empty holes in the ground.

It goes on to say that angry investors were in the city, they had alerted local and regional media and a press conference had been arranged. But it says the press conference was cancelled on a pretext, that there was a media blackout ordered by the authorities, that government officials ordered news agencies to 'pull' stories which were appearing on websites.

To add even more spice they include 'links to the ruling family of the UAE city-state' a couple of times in the article. The President of Al Fajer Properties is Sheikh Maktoum Bin Hasher Al Maktoum.

Now the PR battle is on.

Without, of course, any reference to the accusations, the company says the independent and approved auditors confirm that 15 per cent of this project's construction has been completed and work is continuing.

They say that The audit affirms that Al Fajer Properties have attained the highest level of transparency and is in full compliance with all Rera rules and regulations.

They also say that progress on the project will be available on the Rera website shortly.

I think this is a pretty good example of how a company should react in the face of such accusations.

Compare it with the usual principle used here of ignore it and it'll go away. Atlantis and the whale shark are a classic of the usual method.

Accusations have been made which the company faces head on. They enlist offical help in the shape of RERA, use independent and approved auditors, link in with the official RERA website.

Then they issue a well constructed press release covering all the points and including lots of positive comments. They also use it to not only align themselves with RERA but to remind us of the professional standing of RERA.

The ball is now firmly back in the court of the investors and The Independent.

It'll be an interesting story to follow.


What this PR doesn't do is answer the accusations of government interference, of media blackouts, of pulled stories. Nor should they, it's not a company's responsibility to answer those accusations, but I'd like that side of it to see the light of day.


If you'd like to start at the beginning, The Independent has the story by 'Heerkani Chohan', "the pseudonym of a journalist living and working in Dubai". That story is here.

Al Fajer's answer to the accusations is here in Gulf News.