Gulf Financial Free Zones Update - 18 September to 24 October 2026

This month the courts enforced settlements and policed discretion. Two judgments we reported last month have since been corrected, and we start with those.

In the DIFC, the Court of Appeal’s only judgment of the period, Kapova v Makovini, confirms that a stayed action can be woken up to enforce the settlement that put it to sleep, even when the consent order is not in Tomlin form. A first-instance order in CTS v Pivot puts the same idea to work, and refuses a defaulting buyer 23 months to pay. In VTB Bank, the Court of Appeal declined to make two defendants found in contempt provide security before appealing their sanctions, and a week later a defendant barred for contempt was allowed AED 1m of his own money to fund an appeal. Later, a single sentence in an internal slide deck was held privileged.

In the ADGM, an employer won its trial but lost the argument it had relied on throughout: a signed “full and final” acknowledgement was void, because it did not record that the employee had the chance to take legal advice. And a developer asking for a flat back by default was reminded that a defendant’s silence does not stop the Court from asking questions.

In the QFC, a creditor holding awards worth well over EUR 200m persuaded the Court to undo the transfer of a QFC holding company, approved on a regulator’s questionnaire the Court called patently wrong. The Appellate Division has since confirmed that the Court had jurisdiction to hear the claim at all. A villa owner recovered QAR 11.8m from a contractor that was not what its name suggested. In a dispute within a small technology company, the Court set the ground rules for disclosure. PwC learned that a pay-when-paid clause does not protect a payer who stops chasing, and a contractor learned that a freezing order needs evidence of assets on the move, not just a troubled counterparty.

On the rulebook side, one new DFSA instrument took effect on 2 October, and three more arrive on 1 January 2027.

First, a correction

Last month we reported two DIFC judgments in words the Court has since changed. Both corrections were made on 13 October under the slip rule, RDC 36.41.

Trafigura v Gupta (CFI 040/2025, link). We said the claimants must undertake not to enforce the DIFC freezing order outside the UAE without the Court’s permission. The judgment and order now say outside the DIFC. The Second Defendant spotted the slip. As H.E. Justice Robert French explained in the original judgment, the undertaking's purpose is to keep any enforcement of the DIFC order in the onshore courts under the DIFC Court’s supervision.

EFG v Marj Holding (CFI 029/2025, link 1, link 2). We gave the euro principal as EUR 4,218,152.130. That was the order’s own typing error, and the right figure is EUR 4,218,152.30. The order had also worked out interest for 365 days when the period was 504. H.E. Justice Roger Stewart said that was the only correction of any weight, and doubted anyone would have applied without it. A second order the same day sent the defendants’ application for permission to appeal, made a day late, to the Court of Appeal. The judge would have given them the extra day if he thought the appeal had a real prospect, but his preliminary view was that it did not, and he saw little point in writing full reasons when a further application was inevitable.

DIFC

Court of Appeal

Kapova v Makovini and Pharm Trade Holding Ltd [2026] DIFC CA 012 (link)

DIFC Court of Appeal, 14 October 2026. H.E. Justice Robert French, H.E. Justice Thomas Bathurst and H.E. Justice Roger Stewart. CA 012/2026. Heard 4 September 2026. Mr Sajid Suleman and Ms Maria Mulla, instructed by Abdulla Al Awadi, Advocates & Legal Consultants, for the appellant; Mr Kartikey Mahajan, instructed by SK Legal Consultants FZ-LLC, for the respondents.

Tomlin orders are nearly a hundred years old, and most litigators could draft one in their sleep. This appeal is about what happens when nobody does.

Ms Kapova and Mr Makovini, both Slovak, had been in dispute for years over matters involving a DIFC company. The case went to trial for four days in January 2026. The judge, Sir Jeremy Cooke, encouraged them to settle, and on 13 January they did. Ms Kapova was to pay EUR 1m, starting with EUR 400,000 within 14 days. The next day, a consent order stayed the action with liberty to apply. It was not in the Tomlin form that RDC 36.29 recommends: the terms were not scheduled, and the liberty to apply did not say it was for carrying them into effect.

Ms Kapova did not pay. Mr Makovini applied to lift the stay and for immediate judgment, and the Court granted it. The Court of Appeal has dismissed her appeal.

The Court could enforce the settlement. A stay does not end an action; it pauses it. This consent order contemplated that the action might resume, and it referred to the settlement agreement. That was enough. The English case relied on the other way involved a settlement where no order was made at all. And once Ms Kapova accepted, as she did, that the stay could be lifted to revive her original claim, the settlement would have to be looked at anyway. Starting a new claim over the same ground, the Court added, would probably be an abuse.

Nor could she escape the deal. Its clauses on independent legal advice, no revocation and entire agreement shut out misrepresentation, leaving only fraud, and nobody had pleaded fraud. The Court set out what a fraud case needs: the representation, when and how it was made, why it was false, and why it was dishonest. Even on appeal, those particulars were missing. She complained that she had been led to believe Slovak criminal proceedings were still alive, when they had been closed a year before. The agreement itself said no such thing. The Court also noticed that Mr Makovini sent her the closure decision within days of signing, and that she did not object at the time.

Duress fared no better. Article 41 of the DIFC Contract Law requires an unjustified threat so imminent and serious that the party has no reasonable alternative. There was no identified threat, only pressure to settle, and someone with lawyers who negotiated hard, and could have walked away or waited for judgment, had alternatives. A clause saying “I was not forced” will not bind a person who really was, the Court said, but it does make the court ask whether she was forced into this agreement, in this form.

She had not tried to avoid the agreement, and had said she would comply after learning the facts. Fresh evidence was not considered, because nobody applied to adduce it. She pays the costs.

Use the Tomlin form: the Court forgave its absence here, but there is no need to test that again. Treat no-reliance and no-duress clauses as meaning what they say. And if you think a settlement was obtained improperly, say so quickly, and plead it properly.

VTB Bank PJSC v Kuanyshev and others (CA 013/2026, link)

DIFC Court of Appeal, 13 October 2026. Order with Reasons of the Court of Appeal.

In April, H.E. Justice Michael Black committed several defendants for breaching a worldwide freezing order. Two of them are appealing their sanctions, and the appeal was listed for hearing on 21 October; no decision had been published by 26 October. In September, VTB asked the Court of Appeal to make them provide security for costs, or first pay an unpaid costs order of USD 282,020.38, or not be heard until they had purged their contempt by giving the asset disclosure the freezing order required.

The Court said no. The application came too late, with the hearing so close. The appeal is against a penal order, which is not simply a matter between the parties. A party in contempt is not barred from appealing its sanctions until it has purged the contempt; on its face, this appeal is bona fide, and if there was an error, the appellants are entitled to say so. There is no order as to costs.

One detail from the evidence shows how sanctions can bite on a claimant’s own remedies. VTB’s parallel English freezing order was discharged after VTB could not obtain a licence from the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation to pay the fortification the English court had required. That is the evidence as the order recites it, not a finding. We will report the appeal.

Dhawan v Zurich International Life Limited (CFI 019/2025, link)

DIFC Court of Appeal, 21 October 2026. Order with Reasons of H.E. Chief Justice Wayne Martin.

Mr Dhawan sued Zurich for AED 5m over alleged breaches of confidentiality about an insurance policy he had pledged to a bank. The claim failed on jurisdiction. The judge held that, under the Courts Law 2025, what matters is whether the defendant was a DIFC Establishment when the claim was brought, and Zurich’s DIFC licence had expired in 2019. Its continuing registration as a recognised foreign company, pending deregistration, was not enough, nor was the presence of a different Zurich company licensed in the DIFC. Permission to appeal was refused, and so was a late renewed application.

This was his application to reopen that refusal. RDC 44.154 sets a deliberately high bar: reopening must be necessary to avoid real injustice, the circumstances must be exceptional, and there must be no other effective remedy. Following Silva v United Investment Banks, the Chief Justice said exceptional usually means the integrity of the earlier process has been critically undermined, and that an appeal cannot be reopened to run arguments or evidence that could have been run before. Most of the “new” documents had been in Mr Dhawan’s hands, or before the judge, all along, and a witness’s revised account of a meeting eleven years ago, based on assumptions drawn from what Mr Dhawan had told him, did not come close. He had also served the application on Zurich without the Court’s permission, contrary to RDC 44.159. The Court dismissed the application, with no order as to costs, since Zurich took no part.

Court of First Instance

CTS Middle East FZCO v Pivot Integrated Energy FZC (CFI 024/2026, link)

Court of First Instance, 14 October 2026. H.E. Justice Sir Jeremy Cooke.

Sir Jeremy Cooke again, on the same point as Kapova. A claim for the price of 922.5 tonnes of N-methylaniline settled in April for about AED 5.47m, in four instalments. The buyer paid two, missed the third, and the balance fell due. The action had been stayed with liberty to apply to enforce the settlement, so no new claim was needed.

Judgment followed for AED 4,191,800.49, with interest at 5% from 1 June, about AED 4.27m at the date of the order. The Court refused time to pay. The buyer asked to pay over 23 months or more: USD 100,000 down, then USD 50,000 a month. RDC 48.53 allows that for special circumstances or inability to pay, and the Court looked for cogent evidence. It got management accounts but no audited ones, no valuation of a mortgage-free office bought for AED 1.3m in March 2025, and no suggestion that the buyer could not borrow, or be funded by its manager or an associated company, as it had been before.

As the Court put it, a company may keep trading, and keep paying its other creditors, but not at the expense of the one holding a judgment. The buyer pays the costs.

Green Community Holdings Limited v White (CFI 013/2026, link)

Court of First Instance, 9 October 2026. H.E. Justice Mark Pelling.

If you mean to set aside a default judgment, bring everything the first time. The defendants had been paying by instalments under an agreement the order calls the SPA. They defaulted in October 2025, the claimant terminated in February 2026, and default judgment followed in July. Their application to set it aside failed in September. They then sought permission to appeal, permission to rely on further evidence, and a stay. All three were refused.

Most of the new evidence had been available all along, and the rest would not have mattered. Blaming previous advisers, the judge said, is not a good reason for holding evidence back. The test for setting aside a regular default judgment is a real prospect of defending the claim, not the “balance of prejudice”. A jurisdiction challenge raised for the first time on appeal ran into an exclusive jurisdiction clause in favour of the DIFC Courts. No stay was needed, because the Conflicts of Jurisdiction Tribunal had already stayed enforcement in both the DIFC and the Dubai Courts pending its decision on the defendants’ application of 11 September.

Keshav Global Trading LLC v ETG Commodities Holding Limited (CFI 069/2024; non-party respondent Bank of India, DIFC Branch; link)

Court of First Instance, 14 October 2026. H.E. Justice Sir Jeremy Cooke.

The defendant wanted documents from the bank. The bank had known of the request since 22 May, was chased in June and August, and declined in early September. A non-party disclosure application followed. The bank instructed lawyers on 30 September and asked for until 21 October to file evidence. It got until 16 October, and the costs of asking. A responsible bank, the Court said, should have taken legal advice when the request first arrived. The main application will be decided on the papers unless there is good reason for a hearing.

Salehiya Trading Company v Olympus Europa SE & Co. KG (CFI 031/2025, link)

Court of First Instance, 12 October 2026. H.E. Justice Shamlan Al Sawalehi.

Shortly before trial, the defendant asked the Court to give reasons for each direction made at the pre-trial review, and for its time to appeal to run from then. The Court declined. Case management directions given just before trial do not need the reasoning of a final judgment, and writing it in the last days before trial would not serve the overriding objective. A party that disagrees can seek permission to appeal. The Court also refused an overnight break between a witness’s evidence in chief and cross-examination: both will happen on the same day. The trial began on 19 October.

Ten days later, the same case produced a ruling on privilege (reasons of 22 October, H.E. Justice Rene Le Miere). An internal PowerPoint produced on disclosure contained one sentence saying that, based on experience and legal advice from experts, compensation for ending the distributorship was expected to be one to two times three years’ net revenue. The trial judge had already read it, so the question of privilege went to another judge.

The sentence was privileged. It did not just say that advice had been taken: it set out the resulting assessment and attributed it in part to that advice, in a deck prepared with in-house counsel, next to a slide on the legal position that had been redacted in full. Redacting only the words “and legal advice received from experts” would not do, because the figure itself revealed the advice. The disclosure was inadvertent under RDC 28.67, so the claimant needed permission to use it, and permission was refused. Exhibiting the deck to a witness statement to rely on a different slide was not deployment of the privileged passage and did not waive privilege. The relief was confined to future use: no reliance on the passage or cross-examination about it, and redacted copies in the trial bundle. The judge declined to order destruction of notes and drafts, since the passage was already known, not least to the trial judge.

For disclosure teams: board papers and approval decks often record a lawyer’s view as a number. Redact the number, not just the word “legal”.

Costs

Princeton v Persephone (ARB 015/2026 and ARB 027/2026, link)

Court of First Instance, 21 September 2026. H.E. Justice Mark Pelling. Parties anonymised.

Last month we reported the setting aside of this DIAC award. This is the bill, and it carries a lesson in how to present one. The successful party claimed AED 1,340,910.95 on the indemnity basis and got the standard basis. The Court found four things in the losing side’s conduct outside the norm: a hopeless argument, an informal attempt to have the set-aside claim decided without a hearing, a step to enforce the award in breach of the recognition order, and an application for recognition without notice that said nothing about the set-aside claim already on foot. The last two were serious, and had the costs they caused been claimed separately, the Court would have assessed them on the indemnity basis. But the costs came as one rolled-up figure, neither side wanted a detailed assessment, and the Court could not untangle them. A breach that taints one application does not justify indemnity costs on everything else. So claim the costs of the tainted application separately.

The paying party did not help itself. It asked for “proper scrutiny” and a substantial discount, but challenged no particular item. So the Court took a broad brush: 30% off the unexplained “other work”, 20% off work on documents (less than it would otherwise have cut, because of the paying party’s conduct), nothing for two fee earners who sat in on the hearing, and a reduced brief fee for junior counsel, since a one-day hearing with no cross-examination did not need both a leader and a junior. Leading counsel’s fees were allowed as claimed. Interest runs at 9%, and the successful party must undertake to account for any VAT it recovers. The losing party filed an appeal notice against the set-aside order on 4 September. That bought it no time: an appeal is not a stay, and the Court refused to extend the 14 days for payment.

Enforcement

Ostin and Oleda v Osprey (ENF 185/2025; orders of 25 September, and of 30 September here and here)

Court of First Instance, 25 and 30 September 2026. H.E. Deputy Chief Justice Ali Al Madhani. Parties anonymised.

The aftermath of a fight over a Part 50 examination order. The judgment creditor sought committal of the judgment debtor and its representative for non-compliance. In July, the Conflicts of Jurisdiction Tribunal decided the territorial limits of the Part 50 procedure in the case, and the creditor dropped the committal application. A committal application cannot be discontinued without the Court’s permission, and the Court dealt with that on the papers.

The representative got no costs of her strike-out application, because the creditor had offered to end things by consent two days before she issued it. Her claims for the costs of complying with the Part 50 order, and of the earlier stay application, failed on 30 September for a more basic reason. She was involved as the debtor’s officer and representative, not as a party, so she had no personal right to costs, even though the order bound her personally and carried a penal notice. Part 50 lets a person examined recover travelling expenses, not legal fees. Nor did the Tribunal’s later ruling make the creditor’s reliance on the orders then in force unreasonable after the event. The judgment debtor pays half the creditor’s costs of preparing for the examination, AED 62,702.50, and the representative pays half its costs of answering her applications. If the other side offers to stop, talk before you file.

GTC Trading S.A. v Rashed and another (CFI 046/2023, link)

Court of First Instance, 20 October 2026. Order with Reasons of H.E. Justice Robert French.

A companion piece to VTB. The first defendant has been barred since 2023 from being heard, except on jurisdiction, until he purges his contempt. His assets were sold under a court order, the judgment debt was satisfied, and a surplus of about AED 14.4m was paid into Court. He asked for AED 1m of it to fund his renewed application for permission to appeal. The Court gave him special permission to be heard and released the money to his lawyers’ client account, to be drawn only against invoices for the appeal work, with any balance refunded or repaid into Court and an account filed at the end. The claimant took no position, and the Court saw no need to vary the freezing order, the judgment debt having evidently been satisfied.

ADGM

Nahvi v Reem Hospital Ltd and another [2026] ADGMCFI 0026 (PDF)

Court of First Instance, Employment Division, 6 October 2026. Justice William Stone SBS KC. ADGMCFI-2026-118. Heard 17 September 2026. The claimant was self-represented; Mr Mehboob Nawas of Habib Al Hosani Lawyers & Legal Consultants for the first defendant.

The employer won the trial, but lost the argument it had leaned on from the start.

The claimant was chief human resources officer of a hospital that moved from onshore Abu Dhabi into the ADGM in 2025. In September 2025, he was told his role was redundant, given three months’ notice under his contract, and sent on garden leave. In December, he was paid AED 151,124 and signed an acknowledgement at the foot of the final settlement statement, confirming he would have no further claims. In February he sued.

The employer said the acknowledgement ended it. The Court agreed it looked strong: sweeping, unreserved and signed. Then the judge turned to section 1 of the ADGM Employment Regulations 2024, headed “No waiver”. An agreement to waive the Regulations’ minimum requirements is void unless it meets the conditions for a settlement agreement, and one of those is that the employee warrants, in the agreement, that he has had the opportunity to take independent legal advice. This acknowledgement said nothing of the kind, so it did not bar the claim. The claimant had no lawyer and had not taken the point. The judge took it for him, noting that the condition appears to be a relatively recent addition in the 2024 Regulations.

After that, the claim failed on every head. The senior leadership bonus was discretionary, and there was no evidence the Board used its discretion arbitrarily or discriminatorily; of the claimant’s two witnesses, one had received the bonus, and one had not. The Court made no finding on whether the redundancy was genuine, because it did not need to. The employer had given the notice the contract required and paid for it, and there was no sign of discrimination or victimisation. Smaller claims for insurance, distress and a bonus said to be owed by a former employer that has since been dissolved failed for want of an obligation, evidence or a defendant. The claimant pays the costs.

For employers: check the template, because without the warranty a signed acknowledgement may not hold. For employees: signing one is not necessarily the end of the road, though this claimant still lost. It is a first-instance decision on a point the Court raised for itself, and we expect it to be tested.

Masaood Developments LLC v Bensalem [2026] ADGMCFI 0025 (PDF)

Court of First Instance, Real Property Division, 23 September 2026. Justice Paul Heath KC. ADGMCFI-2026-256. On the papers. Mr Jincy Jaime Stephen Alexander of Monther Al Hammadi Lawyers and Legal Consultancy Office for the claimant; no appearance for the defendant.

A developer sold a flat in Azure Tower on Al Reem Island in 2019 for AED 988,019, payable in 182 instalments to 2034. The buyer stopped paying in July 2023, having paid about AED 479,500. The developer terminated the contract in July 2024 and sued in April 2026. The buyer took no part. The developer sought default judgment for AED 521,054.77, an order ending the contract, and the return of the flat with vacant possession.

The Court refused. In the Real Property Division, default judgment is in principle for money claims only, unless the Court orders otherwise. Following the Privy Council in Lux Locations Ltd v Yida Zhang [2023] UKPC 3, a court asked for any other relief must check that the relief is appropriate, even when the defendant says nothing. Here the money claim and the claim to the flat were bound together, so the Court looked at both.

The sticking point is the “Agreed Termination Amount”, a formula the seller may increase at its absolute discretion. The Court thought it open to attack as a penalty under Cavendish Square Holding BV v Makdessi [2015] UKSC 67. The developer says the penalty rule does not apply, and that UAE law governs instead, under article 390(2) of the UAE Civil Code. The law to apply is still to be decided at an early half-day trial after 30 October, with permission for expert evidence on the penalty point. Costs are reserved.

Last month we said an ADGM ruling on the edges of the penalty rule would have to wait for a contested case. This may be it, though an undefended case is not an ideal vehicle.

Two points for anyone with property on Al Reem Island. The contract chose the onshore Abu Dhabi courts and excluded the ADGM Courts, but only the courts where land lies can decide title or possession, and for Al Reem Island that means the ADGM Courts. Although the contract is governed by Abu Dhabi law, the developer accepted that remedy, evidence, and procedure are matters of ADGM law.

The ADGM Courts register lists no Court of Appeal judgment in the period. The most recent is [2025] ADGMCA 0003, of 7 October 2025.

QFC

J v K [2026] QIC (F) 67 (PDF)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit, 4 October 2026. Justice Fritz Brand, Justice Helen Mountfield KC and Justice James Allsop AC. CTFIC0064/2025. Mr Thomas Williams KC of Selborne Chambers, with Mr Ahmed Durrani, Mr Umang Singh and Mr Masham Sheraz of Sultan Al-Abdulla & Partners, for the claimant; Mr James Collins KC of Essex Court Chambers and Mr Paul Fisher of New Square Chambers, instructed by Omani & Partners LLP, for the defendant. Parties anonymised by the Court.

The most significant QFC decision of the month, for anyone chasing an award against a group with a QFC holding company in it.

J, a German financial institution in solvent liquidation, holds two LCIA awards, the first for about EUR 214m, against L, a Russian group parent, and M, a group company. K is a QFC holding company that L wholly owned. In March 2025, six months after the first award, L sold K to N, another Russian company in the group, for a stated price of about USD 5.5bn. The sale needed non-objection from the QFC Companies Registration Office, and the register was amended on 14 April 2025. J had been advised that English awards cannot practically be enforced in Russia, so that a Russian owner would put K’s assets out of its reach.

The application to the Registration Office included a questionnaire. It asked whether the incoming member or any related party had material outstanding debts, awards or judgments against it. The answer was no. The Court called that patently wrong. The director who signed for N said he did not know about the award, and the Court accepted that he had been negligent rather than dishonest. But it attributed to K the knowledge of K’s own sole director, who was also the sole director of M, and on that basis found K’s misrepresentation intentional.

K said the transfer was about a change in Russian tax law. The Court accepted that tax was probably part of it, but not that tax explained the timing. The board had decided on the transfer in November 2024 and the tax deadline was 1 January 2026, yet the Registration Office was asked to approve it urgently the day after the agreement was signed. On the balance of probabilities, the Court found the timing was driven by an intent to frustrate enforcement in Qatar.

Under Article 133 of the QFC Companies Regulations 2005, the Court can restore a person harmed by a breach to the position they were in before it. It set aside the Registration Office’s approval, restored L to the register as sole shareholder, declared the transfer null and void, and extended the injunction it had granted in March 2026. K pays J’s costs. K’s argument that J should have sought rectification, or gone to the Regulatory Tribunal, failed: the question was whether article 133 gave the relief, not whether some other route existed. Damages were refused, because J’s real loss was a chance of enforcement, hard to value and exposed to double recovery.

The Court also saw a clear issue of Qatari public policy in the idea that disclosure obligations do not reach a transfer made to defeat creditors. It said the Authority and the Registration Office must weigh the issue. It drew on a long tradition against debtors shuffling assets away from creditors, from the Actio Pauliana to the Statute of Elizabeth and articles 272 to 279 of the Qatari Civil Code, while noting that none of it binds the Court.

Two cautions. The order is not the last word: L and N may apply again, with a full and accurate account. And K never answered J’s evidence about asset-shifting, and its sole director did not give evidence, so the findings rest on evidence the Court treated as uncontroverted. A defendant who contests that evidence may fare better.

For those advising QFC entities on a change of ownership, the answers on the Authority’s questionnaire are now evidence. Creditors should check the QFC register.

Jurisdiction confirmed. On 21 October the Appellate Division refused K permission to appeal against the earlier ruling that the Court had jurisdiction at all (J v K [2026] QIC (A) 15, PDF; Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, President, Justice Sir William Blair and Justice Dr Hassan Al-Sayed). K’s point was neat. J is not a QFC entity, so it was common ground that article 8 of the QFC Law gave the Court no jurisdiction. Article 133 is only a regulation, and secondary legislation, K said, cannot widen a court’s jurisdiction, as the Appellate Division itself held in Cambridge in 2025.

The Court disagreed. Article 9 of the QFC Law expressly allows regulations to provide for compensation for breach, and the Legislature intended a financial centre whose court enforces its regime for anyone harmed by a breach, QFC entity or not; the Authority’s own enforcement powers are no substitute. Cambridge concerned an opt-in jurisdiction for parties with no connection to the QFC, which is different. The Court added a warning that clients and their advisers should note: it will be exceptional for a jurisdictional challenge to QFC Regulations, built on Cambridge, to succeed. K pays the costs.

Al-Hitmi v Charles Cross - London LLC and Abdelghaffar [2026] QIC (F) 68 (PDF)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit, 8 October 2026. Justice Dr Muna Al-Marzouqi, Justice Dr Talal Al-Emadi and Justice James Allsop AC. CTFIC0042/2025. Trial 30 August 2026. Al-Hail Law Firm for the claimant; the Law Firm of Mohammed Saud Al-Khater for the defendants.

Five contracts over three years, an unsigned sixth, variation orders the defendants put at around 37, and a villa still unfinished after five years. The owner recovers QAR 11.8m, and the company’s controlling director is personally liable for it.

The company was registered in the QFC for design and consultancy, not construction. Its Instagram page listed London, Doha, Riyadh and Baku. The Court found it had no connection with the well-known London design house whose name it used, and that the director had deliberately passed it off as part of that firm. Instagram, it turns out, is not a licensing authority.

The company said it had only agreed to supervise, and that subcontractors did the building. The Court read the contracts as promises to do the work, with a right to subcontract, and under Article 701 of the Qatari Civil Code, a contractor who delegates remains liable for the work. The owner was entitled to terminate, and the counterclaim failed.

The evidence decided much of the rest. The owner had a detailed engineering report, a supplementary one, and a report from an expert appointed by the Investment and Trade Court in separate urgent proceedings. The defendants called no expert and did not ask to cross-examine the owner’s, so their criticisms were submissions, not evidence. On defects, the Court preferred the owner’s engineers to the court-appointed expert, whose findings concerned the documents rather than the building's condition.

The award is QAR 10.7m to complete, QAR 1m for rectification (a cautious figure, since the evidence did not cost it), and QAR 100,000 in moral damages for the strain on the owner and his wife. The overpayment of about QAR 6.7m was not added on top, because it measured the same shortfall. Delay penalties failed because the delay caused by variations could not be separated from the delay caused by the contractor, and two QAR 1m claims showed no separate loss. The defendants must indemnify the owner against any fine for the unpermitted mezzanine. The director is jointly liable under Article 199 of the Civil Code for his deliberate deceit, and under Article 113 of the Commercial Companies Law, which Article 244 applies to managers. The company’s separate personality did not protect him.

Two points apply more widely. A court awarding the cost of completion will not also add the overpayment. Expert evidence that nobody answers with evidence, or that is not tested in cross-examination, is hard to displace with submissions.

Alioglu v EduShift Technologies LLC and others [2026] QIC (F) 69 (PDF)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit, 12 October 2026. Justice Helen Mountfield KC. CTFIC0055/2026. All parties self-represented.

A dispute between shareholders and directors of a small QFC technology company, over money the claimant says he advanced and access to company systems he says was taken away, with a counterclaim. Trial is listed for 9 December. The claim had already been struck out once by the Registrar after the claimant asked for a stay for settlement talks and then stopped responding to the Registry. He reissued it when the settlement did not come.

The Court asked for a table of each remaining claim, where it is pleaded and against whom, and made clear that another narrative would not do. On disclosure, it applied the test of what is relevant, reasonably necessary and proportionate, from Jaecklein v SDI Sports LLC [2025] QIC (F) 53. It added that a party cannot require the other side to produce particular documents to prove its own case. If the claimant’s documents fall short, that is a point for trial. Anything a party wants to rely on must be disclosed by the date set, or not used without permission.

Strike-out was refused, because the defendants’ points on standing and on claims against directors could not be decided summarily. So was security for costs, for want of material to judge the claimant’s prospects or means; the Court referred to the inherent power recognised in Amberberg Limited v Prime Financial Solutions LLC [2024] QIC (F) 23. And a gentle note on language: the Court accepts documents in Arabic or English and translates them, but a litigant who reads only one may need time to respond.

Talent Alfa Information Technology WLL v PricewaterhouseCoopers - Qatar LLC [2026] QIC (F) 58 (PDF)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit, 20 September 2026. Justice Dr Georges Affaki. CTFIC0029/2026. Heard 3 September 2026. Al Tamimi Advocates & Legal Consultants for the claimant; Mr Patrick Dunn-Walsh of Twenty Essex Street, instructed by Al Tamimi & Company, for the defendant.

A subcontractor did SAP work for PwC on a project for Al Jaber. The subcontract said PwC need not pay unless and until Al Jaber paid it in cleared funds. Al Jaber did not pay, and PwC said that was the end of the matter.

The Court agreed that the clause was a real condition: the parties had called the arrangement “back-to-back” at the time. But the QFC Contract Regulations imply obligations of reasonableness (article 53) and require cooperation (article 54), so PwC had to take reasonable steps to pursue Al Jaber. It suspended the head contract in December 2021 and tried to settle in 2023. Then it did nothing for 16 months, until a demand in March 2025, and its own partner could not explain the gap. PwC could not rely on a non-payment it had allowed to continue. The clause put on the subcontractor the risk that Al Jaber would not pay, not the risk that PwC would not ask. The subcontractor recovered USD 364,700 on two 2021 invoices, plus USD 25,000 for the loss of use of the money, although it had not claimed interest.

The rest of the claim failed. Later maintenance invoices either duplicated earlier ones or covered years the parties had agreed by email to cancel, and emails from the claimant’s own finance staff bound it under the apparent authority rule in article 64(2). A milestone invoice failed for want of proof that the milestone was reached. Each side bears its own costs. Two side notes: the Court held that “Qatar law” in a contract with a QFC entity includes QFC law, following the Appellate Division’s remarks in Daruna, though nothing turned on it here; and the claimant’s lawyers did not attend the trial, and its staff were not allowed to give evidence nobody had been told about.

If you sit between the paying client and an unpaid subcontractor under a pay-when-paid clause, chase the client, and keep a record that you did.

P v I [2026] QIC (F) 64 (page)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit, 30 September 2026. Justice Dr Georges Affaki. CTFIC0059/2026. Ms Oksana Rozhdestvenskaia and Ms Almas Lokhandwala of Maniar Law PLLC for the applicant; the respondent was not served and did not appear. Parties anonymised by the Court.

A contractor began an ICC arbitration, seated in Doha, against its interior design subcontractor on a QAR 18.95m subcontract. It then came to the Court without notice for a freezing order of about QAR 6m, with disclosure orders and service on banks, the Ministry, any liquidator and the shareholders.

The Court accepted jurisdiction. The subcontract named the First Instance Circuit as the competent court for the arbitration; the Qatar Arbitration Law allows that choice, and the tribunal had not yet been formed, so it could not act. Parties drafting a Doha-seated clause can choose the Court in the same way.

The application failed on the evidence. Applying the cumulative test in Thales, the Court said that financial difficulty, or a risk that an award goes unpaid, is not enough for a freezing order. There must be cogent evidence of a real risk that assets will be dealt with outside the ordinary course. The applicant had letters warning of a temporary freeze caused by unrelated litigation, an “Active Blocked” registry notation that nobody explained, small registered capital at the time it signed, an inactive post-office box, a dishonoured cheque, a third party’s claim, and a minority shareholder in liquidation in Italy. Together they suggested distress, not assets on the move. The applicant also failed to prove the QAR 6m figure, identified no bank or asset, and offered no cross-undertaking. The Court distinguished its earlier injunction decision in the J v Kdispute as a case of identified transfers and a sustained pattern of asset shielding.

The dismissal leaves the merits to the tribunal and does not stop a properly evidenced application if circumstances change. There is no order as to costs, the respondent never having been served.

Saleh, Sabra and Palazzi v Nexus Financial Services WLL [2026] QIC (F) 62 (PDF)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, First Instance Circuit, 23 September 2026. Justice Ali Malek KC. CTFIC0056/2025, CTFIC0059/2025 and CTFIC0060/2025. Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP for the claimants; Al Tamimi & Company for the defendant.

Three claimants against a QFC insurance intermediary asked the Court to order it to write to seven named individuals, requesting access to their personal phones and email accounts, on the footing that the firm had never issued work phones. They relied on Phones 4U Ltd v EE Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 116.

The Court declined, for now. Phones 4U concerned alleged covert collusion, with evidence that relevant messages were on personal devices, and there was no comparable evidence here. The order would put obligations on the defendant about property belonging to individuals it may no longer control. The claimants were free to approach the individuals themselves. The Court also refused, at this stage, to require the defendant to explain its searches (sources, custodians, date ranges, and search terms), relying on the law firms to meet their professional duties, but left room for a properly evidenced application if the disclosure turns out to be deficient. The rulings on individual requests sit in annexes that are not published.

Gulf Insurance Group (Gulf) B.S.C. (C) v AlJaber Engineering Company W.L.L. [2026] QIC (C) 9 (PDF)

QFC Civil and Commercial Court, costs assessment, 21 September 2026. Dr Umar Azmeh, Registrar. CTFIC0007/2026. Al-Mahmoud Law Firm for the claimant; the defendant was self-represented.

The defendant, which had overturned a default judgment on appeal for want of proper service, claimed nearly QAR 193,000 in costs. Of that, QAR 167,750 was for a solicitor seconded to it by a consultancy, working in-house. Throughout the case, it had presented itself as self-represented.

The Registrar disallowed all of the secondee’s time. Under the notification principle, a party that gives the impression it has no lawyers cannot present a lawyers’ bill at the end. Whether the help comes from a law firm or a secondee acting as an employee makes no difference; otherwise, simple structuring would defeat the principle. The defendant recovered its own time at the litigant-in-person rate, an outside firm’s enforcement fee and its disbursements, just over QAR 47,000 in all. The Registrar added a pointed reminder that, after 15 years and with guidance in both languages, parties are expected to understand how costs work, and that indemnity costs are available for those who do not.

Catching up. DG v Play Rivals Gaming LLC [2026] QIC (F) 53 (dated 12 August and published in October; Justice Tan Sri Nallini Pathmanathan). A 17-year-old consultant sued a QFC gaming company for withheld fees, and the company asked for the claim to be struck out because a minor cannot sue. The Court agreed he lacked capacity but held that the cure is to bring in his guardian, not to dismiss the claim. It applied article 71 of the Civil and Commercial Procedure Law, which provides for an adjournment to summon the person with capacity. It noted that the QFC Contract Regulations treat a minor’s contract as voidable, not void. Complaints about email service, and that the claim was premature while an appeal against the Employment Standards Office was still possible, also failed. We will report the decision that followed on 20 September next month.

Rulebooks and Practice Directions

DFSA. On 1 October 2026 the DFSA issued its notice of amendments following Consultation Papers 172 and 174. The Prudential – Investment, Insurance Intermediation and Banking Business Module (PIB) Rule-making Instrument (No. 443) 2026 came into force on 2 October 2026. The Conduct of Business Module (COB, No. 444), Islamic Finance Rules (IFR, No. 445) and Glossary Module (GLO, No. 446) instruments take effect on 1 January 2027. We have not yet been through the detailed amendments, and will say what they do next month. Compliance teams have until 1 January to prepare for the other three.