It’s more than three years since The National reported on the collapse of the Hastie Group, the UAE subsidiary of an Australian contractor forced to close suddenly in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the Dubai real estate crash.
About 250 expatriate workers ended up without their salaries and end-of-service gratuity as the company’s remaining cash was clawed back to Australia in its final moments. This was one of the few cases of such losses to staff reported at the time. But there were many others that went unreported in the Great Recession as the UAE real estate boom went bust.