Book tells how Dubai investor won legal battle against rogue advisers

The great fraud fight back, new book reveals how investors can win cases against rogue financial advisers

Amber Waheed (pictured), a businesswoman living in Dubai, has written The Great Fraud Fightback, which documents her journey and seeks to offer a "roadmap" to help others navigate similar complex legal cases. It is published by Dolman Scott in London and available from 12 February 2021.

Waheed says she was duped out of investing the equivalent of $80,000 into investment funds that she thought would be low risk. Instead her financial adviser, Neil Grant, who ran Prosperity Management Consultancy, an unregulated firm, invested Waheed's money into riskier alternatives in order to generate large amounts of commission for himself. She was one of several clients to suffer substantial losses as a result, many were his friends or referrals from acquaintances.

Although Grant insisted the case against him was a result of ‘an administrative matter,' Dubai criminal courts found otherwise and charged him with offering financial advice without a license. Grant manged to escape imprisonment on the more severe charge of signatory forgery, and instead a fine was imposed in August 2017.

Despite an appeal the decision was upheld in the Supreme Court of Justice in Dubai. In the civil case that followed, a judge ordered Grant to pay back $80,000 with costs.

Waheed said, "Financial fraud is a very sophisticated crime, and most people are not quite sure how they have been scammed. This book reveals the plots and traps, his partners, legal loopholes and technicalities."

Nigel Sillitoe, CEO of Insight Discovery and Founder of the aggregator website whichfinancialadviser.com, said, "While the regulations in the UAE and other markets in the Middle East are much stronger these days the lesson to be learnt from Ms Waheed's unfortunate experience is that investors must only seek advice from firms which are regulated in their local market and take advice from qualified advisers with the relevant experience."