Ready to lose a chunk of your cash before you start business? Incorporate in UAE

Here is a quick list of blatant scams for trying to run a legitimate business in UAE.

1. PO BOX

Must have PO BOX with yearly subscription of up to 1000 AED even though you will NEVER receive a single letter except of their junk mail that they fill your box with for loans to get you into more debt. You have no choice.

Cancelling the PO BOX after you go bankrupt is also a pain and due to their delays be ready to pay fines for no reason

2. CCTV Mandatory

Must have CCTV installed. Even if your business is to collect camel shit and dispose it you still need CCTV installed. But wait, paying 2500 AED is not enough, there’s sub-scams in play here also. You can only install from a few specific companies, you can’t buy and install your own. You must do a maintenance contract yearly with the company even though they’ll never do anything for you.

3. Pay pay pay pay pay

Need VISA to employ someone and give people a career? Pay for quota, pay for esignature card, pay for labour file, pay for VISA, pay deposit, pay labour deposit. The average single VISA cost is now approximately 10,000 AED in RAK.

4. eDirham Card Scam

Got payments to make for government fees? Your cash is garbage, first buy an eDirham card, load money on to it with a fee and then pay. One year later when you have more, renew your card first, load more money with an extra fee and pay with that. Another pathetic scam by UAE governments.

5. Refund?

There’s no such thing as refund when you pay money to the government. Do you think those fancy cars and extravagant lifestyle comes by legitimate means? Think again!

6. Rejection

This is also a scam. You will get many rejections for tiny reasons such as photocopy was slightly cut from the corner of the page where there’s no writing. To submit again you have to either pay to do the process again or pay to submit. Both scenarios are possible depending on their mood.

7. Hidden fees

Way too many hidden fees which only pop up after you’ve already put money into your business venture.

9. Time

They will stretch the process up to 4 months with promises it only takes 5-10 days. I am yet to meet a single person where a business was fully up and running within 3 months. This adds many costs and desperation means you will put more cash into their demands just to get started.

10. Business name

If your business name has a single foreign (non-Arabic) word then instead of 200 AED for the company name registration you pay 3000 AED.

And believe me, there are more……………..