Dubai’s AIX faces $10m claims over alleged missed payments

• Two claims at DIFC Courts
• Products offered fixed returns
• AIX intends to restructure investments

Investors have filed claims seeking almost $10 million from companies in the Dubai-based AIX group and related companies, alleging missed payments on investment products offering double-digit returns.

A claim filed in June by Dubai resident Adel Abdel-Latif at DIFC Courts, the Dubai International Finance Centre’s judicial arm, seeks AED29 million ($7.9 million). It alleges that AIX failed to meet payment obligations last November.

A second investor, Carl Marcus Detloff, filed a $1.8 million claim in August, stating that AIX failed to make coupon payments, among other breaches.

The allegations have not been determined by the court. Both cases remain pending.

AIX did not respond to AGBI requests for comment, although a statement published on its website on September 26 said, “exceptional geopolitical uncertainty and significant volatility across financial markets” had “affected valuations and investment realisation cycles” within a limited part of its products.

The company said it would restructure the affected investments, but did not specify which products would be restructured, disclose the value of the underlying assets or unpaid coupons, or say how many investors were affected.

In an interview with Gulf Business in February 2026, AIX’s then-president Fadi Dabbagh said: “We do not attempt to predict geopolitical events. Instead, we build portfolios that can withstand and adapt to them.”

Dabbagh served as AIX president from May 2022 until February 2026, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The investors’ court claims relate to products that AIX marketed with fixed or targeted returns well above yields on conventional investment-grade bonds.

In 2024 AIX issued bonds carrying annual coupons of 12, 16 and 20 percent. Its website says the bonds were “minimal risk” with “low market volatility” and that coupons are “fixed returns, irrespective of market conditions”.

Under another product, AIX Property Secure, investors buy Dubai property from AIX with a three-year rental agreement and a fixed annual return of 14 percent. AIX pledges to repurchase the property after three years at the original price.

AIX marketed its Cayman Islands-incorporated “Secure SPV” – special purpose vehicle – as investing across several unspecified sectors to provide fixed returns through regular coupon payments.

The company’s explanation that market volatility has affected some investments contrasts with marketing material that described some products as offering fixed returns “irrespective of market conditions” and reduced exposure to market downturns.

The SPV targeted a 6 percent distribution each quarter over three years, according to the AIX website. It currently says distributions are performance-based and not guaranteed.

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The group, which lists its Dubai offices as spanning three floors of the Burj Khalifa, has also attracted regulatory action and warnings from outside the UAE.

In September the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority said “AIX Secure SPV was not, and had never been, registered, licensed, regulated or otherwise authorised by the regulator to conduct securities investment business in or from the Cayman Islands”.

CIMA said it issued the notice after receiving “multiple complaints” concerning references to the company’s purported regulatory status.

In November 2024 Qatar’s financial regulator fined AIX Advisory Group after finding that material on its websites misleadingly stated that it offered to arrange investment deals, a regulated activity for which it was not authorised.

The regulator said its investigation did not identify instances in which AIX had actually provided the service. AIX cooperated with the investigation, removed the material and took remedial action.

AIX has pledged to provide investors with a “substantive update” on the proposed restructuring by no later than October 12.