Legalising Commercial Documents at the UAE Embassy
Today, I have carried out my most expensive job as a notary so far, and possibly for the rest of my career. This particular job as a series of commercial documents which had to be legalised with the UAE Embassy. From carrying out this work, I have learnt that it is in all likelihood the most expensive embassy to get your documents legalised. This is for several reasons.
Firstly, for commercial documents, the fee that the Embassy charges is 2000 AED per document for legalisation. This equates to roughly £500. To put that into perspective, for personal documents they charge 150 AED (roughly £35) and most other embassies charge a similar fee for personal or commercial documents. So, £500 is much more than the usual legalisation fee.
Secondly, the UAE Embassy does not allow the bundling of documents. Usually, I would bundle the various documents under one notarial certificate, which means that you would only pay for the legalisation of one document and you would save money as a result. This is not possible at the UAE Embassy. Every single document needs to be legalised separately and the Embassy consular officers will check so if two or more documents are included in a bundle, it will be rejected.
Case in point, a client of mine is going through a restructure and as part of that certain documents needed legalisation from the UAE Embassy. These included certificates of incorporation, change of name certificates, board resolutions, and articles of association. In all, there were 13 documents, which once apostilled and legalised, cost the client just over £9,000! That’s just for the legalisation of the documents. Bearing in mind most commercial legalisation jobs are less than £1,000, this seems crazy.
The moral of the story is that commercial documents that need to be legalised to be used in the UAE is an expensive procedure. Caution needs to be taken to ensure that documents are not accidentally bundled, which risks the document being rejected, time being lost and having to pay for the new documents to be apostilled again.
If you would like to discuss the process, the cost, or requirements, feel free to get in touch.
You can find out more information on the UAE Embassy’s website here – https://www.mofaic.gov.ae/en/Services/attestation