Qatar is in the news for all the wrong reasons at the moment, as stories emerge of their management (or mismanagement) of the World Cup on a daily basis.

Our story this morning is nothing to do with the World Cup, a little to do with Qatar, and a big reminder of the trouble with taking out large loans…

43 year old engineer, Brian Glendinning, found himself spending two months behind bars, after being arrested on his arrival in Baghdad. The father of three, from Fife, had taken out a loan whilst working in Doha in 2016, quite a sizeable loan too, of £20,000.

It wasn’t until he was on sick leave whilst back home, that he struggled to keep up the repayments, triggering a Red Notice from Interpol, and a subsequent arrest as he tried to enter Iraq for a new work project some years later.

When Mr Glendinning arrives home in the next few days, plenty of details will emerge of his time spent behind bars, and he is apparently keen to tell his story, but we’re particularly interested in the underlying cause of this experience – taking out the loan in the first place.

Too often, large loans are seen as ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards, when in fact, they can be anything but.
In Mr Glendinning’s case, it was a ‘Get into Jail’ card.

The laws in Qatar are undoubtedly stricter with this type of thing, than they are over here, but that’s where he took the loan out, so there isn’t really an argument to say it wasn’t fair.

Those were the rules and he fell foul of them, whether or not we agree with them.

Now, we are extremely empathetic to Mr Glendinning, and we understand that his experience can’t have been a pleasant one. Even now, as he looks to come home, he is worried about lay overs in the Gulf States in case he is rearrested.

That said, the impact wasn’t only felt by Mr Glendinning himself. His family, including his wife and three children, will have been significantly affected by all this, and the full impact may not be known just yet. With that in mind, we want to stress the potential dangers of taking out large loans like this, when there are so many variable factors in life. In Mr Glendinning’s case, going on sick leave was the problem, and the consequences have been terrible.

We look forward to following the story in the coming weeks, to hear about Mr Glendinning’s experiences, but want to remind people out there, especially those who may be experiencing vulnerability, that large loans like this are definitely not always the answer.

We wish Mr Glendinning and his family well, and hope that they are able to recover from the stress of this event.