A passenger left a jacket with more than €30,500 (US $35,600) in cash in the pocket at Dubai International Airport late last year, but they have never bothered to come forward and reclaim their lost property.
The case came to light after the UAE’s Ministry of the Interior released a huge data set listing every piece of lost and found property handed into the police in 2025 under its open data policy.
The jacket with €30,570 in a combination of notes and loose coins was handed into the airport police station at Dubai International by a security officer at around 5:56 pm on New Year’s Eve 2025.
Months later, the property has not been claimed, and the Dubai Police Force has now closed the case.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 22,467 items of lost property were registered with the UAE authorities over the course of 2025, while 36,403 items of found property were handed into police stations across the country.
The vast majority of lost and found items were registered at Dubai International, which, until only recently, was the busiest airport in the world for international flights, handling more than 95 million travellers.
December proved to be the airport’s busiest month of 2025, when 8.7 million passengers passed through its terminals.
Late last year, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, passed new legislation that imposes heavy fines on anyone who doesn’t hand over found property to the police.
Violators who illegally hold onto property they have found can be slapped with a massive fine of up to 200,000 Dirhams ($54,400) if they don’t register their find online within 24 hours and hand it in to a police station within 48 hours.
Finders can, however, request to keep the lost property if the owner doesn’t come forward to claim it within one year.
In the past, Dubai Police have had a little more luck in returning lost property to travelers at Dubai International. In February 2025, an Egyptian traveller picked up the wrong bag from the carousel as they rushed to check in for an onward flight to China.
The traveller’s bag contained $6,800 in cash, but there were two bags on the same flight from Cairo that looked very similar. The man only realized his mistake after he left the baggage hall and immediately reported what had happened to the airport police.
The police immediately reviewed surveillance footage from the baggage hall and discovered that a female passenger had picked up the man’s bag by mistake. They were then able to track her down using live cameras and swapped over the bags.
