Rony H. moved to Dubai in 2003 in the midst of the city’s building boom, and eventually got a job in the red-hot property market. By 2007 he worked as real estate broker, banking $10,000 a month selling condos and apartments. “It was easy money,” Rony said. But a year later, the bottom fell out of the real estate market as the global financial crisis hit the Gulf. Rony lost his job when the real estate company he worked for folded. The company’s owner fled. “He has millions with him, and he’s in Germany in jail now,” Rony said, adding that he thinks his boss was laundering money. Rony wasn’t caught up in the scam, and he’s now returned to Lebanon after spending the last six months unemployed in Dubai. He’s one of perhaps thousands of Lebanese who have returned jobless and near penniless from the Gulf, a phenomenon that
