Russian & CIS Desk
We act for Russian and CIS clients in the UAE in Russian — without an interpreter standing between you and the lawyer running the matter. Filings, hearings and correspondence with the authorities happen in Arabic and English, as UAE procedure requires; the conversation about them happens in your language, with a partner who has read the file. Matters reach this desk with something already in motion: a judgment that has to be enforced here, a notice that surfaced at a border, an account that stopped working on a Monday morning. Below is what we are usually called about, and what the first days of each of those look like.
What we are usually called about
- Enforcement from Russia and the CIS into the UAE
Creditors holding a judgment from a Russian or CIS court, asking what it is worth against assets in the UAE: whether it can be recognised here, what can be secured while recognition runs, and where the debtor's assets actually sit. The sequence matters more than the paperwork — a precautionary attachment obtained before the debtor reacts is worth more than a perfect recognition file assembled a month later.
- Interpol Red Notices and extradition requests
Notices circulated by CIS states that surface at a UAE border, in a residency process, or in a bank's screening check. Two tracks run in parallel: the exposure in the UAE, where the law sets out conditions without which surrender cannot be considered and grounds on which it must be refused, and the notice itself, challenged through the mechanism Interpol's own rules provide.
- Banking compliance after relocation
Accounts frozen, or refused at onboarding. Source-of-funds and source-of-wealth requests, and AML reviews triggered by a CIS-linked profile. The first submission becomes the case record, so it is assembled once and properly: the origin of the money, the economic logic of the account, and documents that support both — rather than a volume of paper sent quickly to make the question go away.
- Travel bans and criminal complaints used as leverage
A commercial disagreement in the UAE can arrive as a criminal complaint, and a complaint can bring a travel restriction that holds while the investigation runs. The work is to establish which authority imposed what, on what basis, and what the realistic route to lifting it is — while the commercial side of the dispute is handled in the forum where it belongs, rather than being argued through the criminal file.
- Corporate conflicts between CIS partners in UAE structures
Partners who built a business together elsewhere and hold it through a UAE company: disputes over control, share transfers, management conduct and money that has left the perimeter. These matters move fast between the corporate, civil and criminal tracks, and the decisive question is usually which of them the other side will reach for first.
- Frozen crypto and exchange accounts
Balances held with a UAE-licensed platform sit inside the same freezing regime as bank money: an order reaches the platform and the balance stops moving. Arguing with the platform achieves nothing — it is executing an order. The route runs through identifying the authority behind it, documenting the origin of the holdings, and the statutory challenge, which has a short window.
Who you will be dealing with
