Dubai Police have arrested eight people accused of running a scheme that supplied fraudulent international driving licences to customers who had never set foot in the country those licences claimed to come from. Investigators said the suspects sourced licences from a neighbouring nation and exploited reciprocal licence-exchange agreements between that country and the UAE, allowing buyers to swap the foreign document for a UAE licence without ever completing mandatory driving lessons or passing a road test.
Each fraudulent licence reportedly sold for Dh10,000. According to police, the network operated through offices of document-processing and translation businesses, using them as a front to find and recruit clients looking for a shortcut around the UAE's licensing requirements. The case was uncovered through a joint effort involving Dubai Police, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
Police stressed that bypassing driving lessons and official tests puts road safety at serious risk, since drivers who never trained locally may be unfamiliar with UAE traffic laws and road conditions. Authorities warned that buyers who knowingly purchased an illegally obtained licence also face legal consequences, not just the people who ran the scheme.
The announcement comes as Dubai has steadily expanded digital oversight of its licensing procedures, relying more heavily on smart verification systems to catch irregular paperwork before it reaches the roads. Officials said the investigation remains open and that further arrests are possible as police continue tracing other clients and intermediaries connected to the network.