Dubai: A visit to MMABank GT, the company which its CEO Malek Noureed Awan said is being dragged through the dirt unnecessarily, revealed it does not operate as a bank as its company name suggests.
Unlike normal banks that have tellers and security, MMABank GT looks like a typical office.
“We don’t operate as a commercial bank,” Mohammad Ali Sadiq, the HR manager and acting spokesperson of MMABank GT, told Gulf News.
He said his office operates like a forex trading company which was also mentioned on its website. But Sadiq said they had suspended forex trading since Awan was detained by the authorities six months ago.
According to its trade licence from the Dubai Department of Economic Development (DED), MMABank GT’s activities are limited to “General Trading” which means the import and export of goods.
To be a registered forex trading company, the DED representative said a company should be registered with the UAE Central Bank and Dubai Police before DED can grant a commercial licence. MMABank GT could not be seen on the list of registered banks and institutions with the UAE Central Bank.
On its website MMABank GT said it is a fully licensed and regulated European investment firm.
But MMABank GT was mentioned on Sweden’s warning list of “Firms you should avoid doing business with”.
“An inclusion in the list normally means that the company operates without necessary licences in that country that has issued the warning,” Lars Malmstrom, Head of Consumer Affairs Division and Deputy Communications Director of the Finansinspektionen (FI), the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, told Gulf News in an email.
“We add companies to the list either after having trouble with that company in Sweden, or because we have received a warning from another supervising authority in the world and that the company does not have a licence to operate in Sweden,” Malmstrom added.
MMABank GT was also included in the Investor Alerts of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (Iosco) by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority in August 2012. MMA Capital Markets Limited and MMA Forex & MMA FX made it onto Iosco’s list because of a warning alert issued by the Central Bank of Ireland.
