Transparency Report

Every report states its period and the date its figures were put together.

If a number is corrected or materially revised later, the revised report says so. We won’t knowingly pass off old figures as current, or combine periods in a way that changes the picture of what we did.

We give totals for records published in the period — dossiers, investigations and reports — and how many were later updated, corrected, restricted or withdrawn. We may also show which jurisdictions and broad topics the work covered.

These figures measure what we produced. They are not a measure of guilt, misconduct or enforcement among the people and companies we covered.

We may give totals for the evidence behind our work: how many sources were cited and the main kinds relied on, such as judgments, regulator decisions, official records, company filings, interviews and documents sent to us.

Sharing those totals never obliges us to reveal a confidential source, unpublished evidence, privileged communications or anything the law stops us disclosing.

We report how often people and companies were invited to comment before critical reporting went live, and how often they gave a real answer.

A refusal or a lack of response is never presented as an admission, as proof of wrongdoing, or as confirmation of what was put to them.

Sometimes contacting a subject first is unsafe, legally restricted or not practical. We will not take that risk just to improve a number in this report.

We report how many correction and amendment requests arrived and, where practical, how each ended: a material correction, a clarification, an update, a grade change, a restriction, a removal, or no real change.

A correction fixes a mistake. An update reflects something that happened afterwards. A record that was accurate when published does not become wrong because a later decision changed things.

We give totals for requests to remove or hide published material. Where possible we separate the grounds: a factual mistake, privacy or data protection, legal proceedings, a court order, mistaken identity, later events, and requests made mainly for reputational reasons.

Nothing here will reveal confidential legal correspondence or prejudice a case that is still running.

Dubai Scammers does not accept money, gifts, favours or anything else in return for removing, hiding, delaying, softening or materially altering accurate reporting.

When someone makes a credible attempt to pay for or improperly steer an outcome, we may log it internally and, where it is lawful, report the total here.

We are careful not to call an ordinary correction request, a settlement proposal or a lawyer’s letter bribery or improper pressure without firm factual and legal grounds.

We may receive legal notices, demands to correct or remove material, data-protection requests, court orders, summonses and other formal legal letters.

Where it is lawful and does not harm proceedings, privilege, confidentiality or anyone’s rights, we may disclose how many arrived and of what general type.

Equally, we don’t brush a demand aside because it comes from a subject or their lawyer. Each is judged on its legal and factual merits.

Dubai Scammers may earn income from Research Membership and from access to professional research services, including Lens.

Membership carries no right — under contract or otherwise — to have a record removed, a grade changed, publication stopped, coverage softened, or a correction made that the evidence doesn’t support.

Where it helps people understand how we are funded, we may publish membership totals and membership income.

We name the main categories of income behind our work, within legitimate confidentiality and legal limits.

Where a donor, investor, member, sponsor, commercial partner or other financial tie creates a material conflict in a matter, it is handled through the Conflict Register and our internal procedures.

We won’t hide a financial relationship if leaving it out would mislead people about our independence.

Material organisational conflicts found during the period are dealt with under the Dubai Scammers Conflict Register.

This report may give totals for conflicts found, recusals made and other safeguards used, without exposing private or confidential detail.

A conflict does not, on its own, make a piece of reporting invalid.

Research Members can send us evidence and ask us to look again at existing records, so we are open about how membership is kept separate from editorial results.

We may report how many review requests members sent and how many led to a correction, an amendment or no real change.

That lets anyone check that paying for membership does not buy a favourable decision.

Where Lens or other restricted systems are opened to approved government, police or legal professionals, we may publish totals for that access where it is lawful and operationally safe.

We will not disclose anything that could identify a confidential inquiry, weaken operational security, reveal protected research or get in the way of lawful official work.

Access to our systems does not mean Dubai Scammers endorses a user’s investigation, conclusions or later actions.

We may describe broadly how we protect non-public evidence, confidential submissions and restricted research systems — for instance role-based access, identity checks, access logs and internal permissions.

We will not publish technical detail that could help someone break into or tamper with our systems.

We may receive information from confidential sources and whistleblowers.

Nothing in this report requires us to name a protected source, or to publish anything that could reasonably identify one, where that would be unlawful, unsafe, against a promise we made, or contrary to proper source protection.

Where permitted, we may give totals for information requests received from government bodies, regulators or police during the period.

Whether we can say that a particular request exists — or what it asked — depends on the law, any court order, confidentiality duties and the facts.

We make no promise to publish anything the law forbids us to disclose.

Each report shows a publication date and a version number.

If we find a material factual error in it later, we correct it under the same rules as our investigations and mark the change, rather than quietly replacing the number.

We do not undertake to disclose confidential sources, privileged legal advice, protected personal data, unpublished investigative material, information a court has restricted, security-sensitive detail, or anything whose release would put someone at unjustified risk.

We may also hold information back where releasing it would harm an active investigation, interfere with legal proceedings or breach a legal duty.

Something missing from this report is neither a confirmation nor a denial that it exists.

The figures for the selected year are in the dashboard at the top of this report. A teal dot marks a figure counted live from our records when the page loads. A saffron dot marks a figure entered by the editorial team. “Not recorded” means nobody has entered a figure yet — it does not mean zero.