Thomas Vanhee (UAE Corporate Income Tax):
Thomas Vanhee, the founding partner of Aurifer Middle East Tax Consultancy DMCC, and the co-chair of the Middlesex University / Aurifer GCC Tax Certificate course, has more than 15 years of experience working with tax in law firms and with governments in Europe and in the GCC region. He was involved in European tax policy projects, as well as in projects with several European governments.
Thomas was also heavily involved in the drafting of the Saudi VAT law legislation and in the implementation of VAT with the Ministry of Finance of the UAE.
Furthermore, Thomas also teaches International and European taxation at Paris Sorbonne Abu Dhabi. He currently lectures at the DIFC Academy of Law. He is also the Editor in Chief of the region’s first tax magazine – the ‘Gulf Tax Magazine’, published by LexisNexis.
Thomas also publishes regularly in international books and tax technical magazines and is a regular speaker at international events.
Varun Chablani (Tax Fraud and Prevention):
Varun Chablani, the Tax Learning and Development Lead at Aurifer, has extensive experience in tax litigation, consulting, compliance, policy advisory and academics in India. He also has VAT and CIT experience in the Gulf markets.
He is responsible for the end-to end-training, learning and knowledge development activities within Aurifer. He also regularly writes articles in prestigious publication houses like IBFD, Bloomberg etc. on important tax topics.
He enjoys teaching and is a guest faculty at an Indian law university. He has presented papers in prestigious international conferences.
Ellie Abdali (M&A and Tax):
Ellie has over fifteen years of experience delivering international tax services to multinational companies on the domestic and cross-border tax aspects of their business model, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and collaborations. She also advises investment funds, sovereign wealth funds, and companies in the life sciences and healthcare to venture funds.
Ellie was on a fast-track career path with Deloitte (Amsterdam/New York) and PwC (Dubai) for over ten years. During her tenure with Big4 accountancy firms, she advised the firms’ prominent clients, including private investment firms, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and institutional investors. The main sectors where she has had experience in, include energy and utilities, Financial Services, Consumer Business, Manufacturing, Logistics, Telecom, and Healthcare.
Before joining Aurifer, she was the Tax Lead for NEMEA Group. She was also the Tax Divestment Lead for Emerging Markets at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, wherein she had delivered Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) projects across Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East – North Africa (MENA), and Russia.
Nirav Rajput (UAE Corporate Income Tax):
With more than a decade of practical experience in both corporate tax and indirect tax, Nirav has the right ingredients to assist businesses on domestic and cross border tax implications and help MNEs to optimize their overall group structure by leveraging the tax regimes in the GCC.
His core clientele includes Fortune 500 companies from niche sectors such as pharmaceuticals, defense and FMCG. He combines business strategy, tax and innovation to meticulously plug any existing tax leakages and optimize transaction flows / structures in the simplest way possible.
Nirav has delivered several tax trainings and seminars on the proposed CIT regime, Economic Substance Regulations etc.
David Russel KC (Inheritance, Sharia and Taxation)
David Russel KC has a wealth of knowledge and industry experience in taxation, through his exploits as an academic and practicing specialist in tax law. David was President of the Taxation Institute of Australia from 1993 to 1995, and of the Asia Oceania Tax Consultants’ Association from 1996 to 2000.
He is currently a member of the Middle East and North Africa Branch Committee of the Chartered Institute of Taxation (UK), a member of the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers, a Freeman of the City of London and an Honorary Member of the Taxation Institute of Hong Kong. In 2016 he chaired the Dubai International Financial Centre’s (DIFC’s) Wealth Management Review Working Group.
Hany Elnaggar (Domestic Tax System in the GCC 1)
Hany Elnaggar is certified accountant “CA” with more than 20 years of tax experience in various industries in multiple jurisdictions including GCC and Middle East, Turkey and Africa. He has extensive experience in direct and indirect tax, international tax planning, TP, CbC reporting, BEPS, PE profit allocation, creating and establishing tax departments and VAT implementation leader for GCC.
He has worked in many companies and tax positions including Egyptian Tax Authority as Tax Auditor, PWC Middle East as Senior Tax consultant, Novartis Group as Group Tax Manager, ACWA Power International as Group Tax & Zakat Senior Manager for Middle East & Turkey and Africa, Ericsson as Head of Tax for Saudi and Egypt Region and leadership team member for Rest of Middle East & Africa, and Head of Tax for Middle East at Nissan.
Safae Guennoun (Transfer pricing in GCC)
Safae Guennoun is an international transfer pricing (TP) expert with more than 15 years of experience. Safae worked in various consulting firms in Western Europe (Belgium and Germany) as well as the Middle East. She has led and upskilled a large TP team at a Big 4 consulting firm in the Middle East and has assisted various tax authorities with capacity building programs (legislation drafting, training, etc.). Safae is a frequent speaker at international tax seminars on TP and is fluent in multiple languages including Standard Arabic (Fussha)
Lex Neijtzell (EU e-commerce)
Lex Neijtzell de Wilde works in Deloitte’s Indirect Tax practice in Amsterdam, is Head of the Dutch Indirect Tax Knowledge Management practice and working as researcher and teacher at Tilburg University. Lex published several articles on VAT and is working on a (PhD) dissertation.
Lex has a broad experience in VAT and his main specializations are Tax Policy and (implementation of) legislation. Lex has a degree in Law from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands and a post-master Tax education. Lex is a member of the VAT section of the Dutch Tax Advisors association (NOB).