Oqab v Oorja — DIFC Part 50 Examination Power Extends Beyond DIFC-Sited Assets

The DIFC Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against a Part 50 examination order while taking the opportunity to correct a legal error in the Enforcement Judge's reasons. The Enforcement Judge had held that the examination power under RDC Part 50 could not exceed the Court's enforcement jurisdiction, which he construed as confined to assets within the DIFC. The Court of Appeal confirmed, consistently with its earlier decision in Orlagh v Orchid [2026] DIFC CA-001-2026, that this was wrong. The phrase 'inside the DIFC' in Article 31(4) of DIFC Courts Law No 2 of 2025 describes the place where the enforcement process is conducted, not a territorial ceiling on the subject matter of inquiry. A Part 50 examination may therefore range across a judgment debtor's global asset position. Because the error appeared only in the Enforcement Judge's reasons and not in the operative orders — which were correctly drawn and imposed no unlawful restriction on their face — there was no basis to set aside those orders on appeal. The Court nonetheless ordered the respondent to pay the appellant's costs fixed at AED 373,600, on the ground that the erroneous reasoning had itself generated the appeal. The decision also reaffirms that the Court of Appeal will not reopen a prior appellate decision merely because a party mounts respectful criticisms of its reasoning, applying the criteria established in Carmon Reestrutura-engenharia E Serviços Técnios Especiais (Su) LDA v Antonio Joao Catete Lopes Cuenda [2024] DIFC CA 003.

Facts

Oqab held a judgment of the Dubai Court of Cassation dated 16 May 2023 against multiple respondents, including Oorja as Second Judgment Debtor. On 5 December 2023 the Enforcement Judge, H.E. Justice Nassir Al Nasser, made a recognition order pursuant to Article 7(4) of the Judicial Authority Law, Dubai Law No 12 of 2004, in proceedings numbered ENF 285/2023. The recognised sum was AED 4,643,506,696.44, together with interest at 5% per annum from 16 May 2023 until the date of payment. On 10 July 2024 the Enforcement Judge made Part 50 examination orders against two judgment debtors, Oorhna and Oorja. Those orders required attendance at a virtual hearing to answer on oath such questions as the Court might require and as might be put by the judgment creditor or its legal representatives. Under RDC 50.10 and 50.5(6), the judgment debtors were directed to provide information about assets, means, and any other information required to enforce the recognition order, and to produce all documents within their control relating to their means of satisfying it, including documents specifically identified in Schedule A to the order, to be delivered by email within 14 days of service. An Amended Order directed to Oorja alone was issued on 6 November 2025, replicating paragraphs 3 to 6 of the original Part 50 Order. Oorja applied to set aside the Part 50 Order. The Enforcement Judge dismissed that application on 28 January 2026, directing that the Part 50 Order remain in full effect without variation, that the examination hearing proceed on the earliest available date, and that Oorja comply fully with the order — including answering all proper questions relating to her assets, means, financial history, and any information relevant to enforcement — subject only to valid foreign confidentiality or collateral-use restrictions. In his accompanying reasons, however, the Enforcement Judge stated that the examination power under RDC Part 50 could not exceed the Court's enforcement jurisdiction, which he held was expressly confined to enforcement inside the DIFC, so that questions directed exclusively to assets outside the DIFC fell outside the Court's jurisdiction and would have to be pursued before the Dubai Courts. Oqab appealed on the basis that those reasons were inconsistent with the Court of Appeal's decision in Orlagh v Orchid [2026] DIFC CA-001-2026. Permission to appeal was granted by H.E. Justice Nassir Al Nasser on 12 March 2026. The appeal was heard on 19 May 2026, Edward Brown KC appearing for Oqab and Nigel Jones KC and Lisa Freeman for Oorja. At the conclusion of the oral hearing, following a brief adjournment, the Court announced that the appeal was dismissed, with reasons to follow.

Issues before the court

• Does the phrase 'inside the DIFC' in Article 31(4) of DIFC Courts Law No 2 of 2025 confine the Enforcement Judge's jurisdiction to assets or entities situated within the DIFC, or does it describe only the place at which the enforcement process is conducted?
• Is the scope of the examination power under RDC Part 50, exercised in aid of the Enforcement Judge's jurisdiction under Article 31(4), limited to questions and documents concerning assets within the DIFC?
• Where an Enforcement Judge's stated reasons contain a legal error but the operative orders are themselves unimpeachable, does the Court of Appeal have a basis to interfere with those orders on appeal?
• On what basis will the DIFC Court of Appeal decline to reopen an earlier decision of the Court of Appeal, and were those criteria satisfied in respect of Orlagh v Orchid [2026] DIFC CA-001-2026?

The court's reasoning

The Court's analysis proceeded in four distinct stages. First, the Court identified the correct interpretation of Article 31(4) of DIFC Courts Law No 2 of 2025. That Article confers jurisdiction on the Enforcement Judge over 'the enforcement of judgments and judicial decisions affixed with the executory formula issued by local or foreign courts, including the Dubai Courts … inside the DIFC, and in accordance with the Rules of the Courts'. The Court adopted the analysis set out in Orlagh v Orchid at paragraphs 56 to 58. The locational qualifier 'inside the DIFC' refers to the place of enforcement — that is, the place where the enforcement process is conducted — and not to the subject matter of the inquiry or to assets situated within the DIFC. The Court illustrated this by transposing the phrase: 'The enforcement inside the DIFC of judgments … issued by … the Dubai Courts'. The relocation of the words changes nothing in substance but makes the grammar plain. To read the provision as confining the examination to DIFC-sited assets would produce an absurdity: the Enforcement Judge would be required to satisfy himself that DIFC assets existed before acquiring jurisdiction to inquire whether any existed — a circularity that would render the examination power nugatory. It would also create unnecessary boundaries between the coverage of inquiries by the DIFC Enforcement Court and those of judges elsewhere, 'providing scope for endless jurisdictional gaming'. Second, the Court applied that interpretive conclusion to RDC Part 50 directly. Paragraph 58 of Orlagh v Orchid stated in terms that Article 31(4) 'is not constrained to enforcement action concerning assets within the DIFC and does not constrain the scope of the power in aid of that jurisdiction which is conferred by RDC Part 50'. The Enforcement Judge's reasons in the present case — which treated the examination as limited to assets or matters relevant to enforcement within the DIFC, and held that questions directed exclusively to assets outside the DIFC must be pursued before the Dubai Courts — were squarely inconsistent with that holding. The Court had no difficulty identifying the inconsistency but declined to reopen Orlagh v Orchid. Oorja's counsel had advanced respectful criticisms of the reasoning in that decision, but the Court held that those criticisms did not satisfy the criteria for revisiting a prior Court of Appeal decision as established in Carmon Reestrutura-engenharia E Serviços Técnios Especiais (Su) LDA v Antonio Joao Catete Lopes Cuenda [2024] DIFC CA 003. Third, the Court introduced a qualification of practical importance. Confirming that the full scope of Part 50 is available does not mean that an examination is unlimited in practice. The Enforcement Judge retains a discretion to govern the conduct of the examination so as to keep it reasonably proportionate to its legitimate purpose. The Court stated explicitly that the Judge 'is not bound to permit counsel for a judgment creditor to roam at large in the course of the examination'. This preserves judicial case-management authority. The Court was careful, however, to distinguish between that discretion — which concerns how the examination is conducted within its proper scope — and the erroneous jurisdictional limitation the Enforcement Judge had sought to impose, which purported to restrict the scope of the power itself. Fourth, the Court addressed the appellate mechanics. The Enforcement Judge's orders — requiring attendance, answers on oath, and production of documents — were correctly framed. They did not on their face import any restriction on the scope of the examination. Because an appeal lies against orders and not against the reasons that accompany them, the error in the Enforcement Judge's reasons provided no basis to set aside orders that were themselves unimpeachable. The appeal was therefore dismissed. On costs, the Court departed from the usual rule that costs follow the event. Because the erroneous reasons had been the foundation upon which the appeal was brought, it was appropriate to require the Respondent to bear the Appellant's costs of both the appeal and the permission application, fixed at AED 373,600 on the basis of the Appellant's costs statement.

Applicable law

• Article 31(4), DIFC Courts Law No 2 of 2025 — confers jurisdiction on the Enforcement Judge over the enforcement of judgments issued by local or foreign courts, including the Dubai Courts, 'inside the DIFC'; interpreted as describing the place of enforcement, not a territorial ceiling on the subject matter of examination
• RDC Part 50, Rules 50.5(6) and 50.10 — empowers the Enforcement Judge to require a judgment debtor to provide information about assets, means, and any other information required to enforce a judgment, and to produce all documents within the judgment debtor's control relating to means of satisfaction
• Article 7(4), Judicial Authority Law, Dubai Law No 12 of 2004 — basis on which the DIFC Courts recognised the Dubai Court of Cassation judgment in ENF 285/2023
• Orlagh v Orchid [2026] DIFC CA-001-2026 — binding Court of Appeal authority holding that Article 31(4) does not confine the Enforcement Judge's jurisdiction to assets within the DIFC and does not constrain the scope of the examination power conferred by RDC Part 50; paragraphs 56–58 quoted and applied
• Carmon Reestrutura-engenharia E Serviços Técnios Especiais (Su) LDA v Antonio Joao Catete Lopes Cuenda [2024] DIFC CA 003 — establishes the criteria governing the DIFC Court of Appeal's power to depart from its own prior decisions; applied to decline reopening Orlagh v Orchid

Practical implications

Judgment creditors enforcing Dubai court judgments — or foreign court judgments — through the DIFC recognition regime can now deploy Part 50 examinations to their full breadth without fear of a jurisdictional objection framed around the location of assets. Questions about a judgment debtor's global asset position — bank accounts, real property, corporate shareholdings, financial history — all fall within the scope of a properly issued examination order. The decision forecloses any argument that the DIFC Enforcement Judge's powers are activated only by the presence of assets within the DIFC. Practitioners drafting examination notices and question schedules should nonetheless attend carefully to the Court's explicit preservation of the Enforcement Judge's case-management discretion. The Court stated that the Judge is not bound to permit counsel to 'roam at large'. Examination schedules should therefore be drafted with a clear and demonstrable connection between each question or document category and the objective of enforcing the specific judgment in issue. An exhaustive schedule designed to fish beyond legitimate enforcement purposes risks judicial curtailment on proportionality grounds, even though no jurisdictional bar exists. For judgment debtors and their advisers, a bare objection founded on the DIFC/non-DIFC asset distinction is no longer available. Resistance to examination must be grounded in valid foreign confidentiality restrictions, collateral-use undertakings, or proportionality arguments — precisely the grounds the Enforcement Judge himself identified as permissible in the 28 January 2026 order. Parties who have been relying on jurisdictional objections of this kind in ongoing examinations should reassess that position immediately. More broadly, the costs outcome carries a warning. A party who successfully resists an appeal on the merits may still be ordered to pay the appellant's costs where an error in that party's own prior position — here, erroneous reasons that the Enforcement Judge delivered while dismissing Oorja's set-aside application — was the cause of the appeal being brought. Enforcement practitioners and their clients should weigh this exposure before advancing legally unsustainable positions in examination proceedings, even positions that ultimately find their way only into reasons rather than orders.

Precedent value: This is a binding decision of the DIFC Court of Appeal. Read alongside Orlagh v Orchid [2026] DIFC CA-001-2026, which it endorses and declines to reopen, it conclusively settles that RDC Part 50 examination orders are not territorially limited to assets situated within the DIFC. The decision is also authority for two procedural propositions. First, an appellate court will not interfere with orders that are correctly drawn merely because error appears in the accompanying reasons; the appeal must identify a defect in the operative order itself. Second, a respondent whose legally erroneous reasoning generates an appeal may be ordered to pay the resulting costs even where the appeal is dismissed — the costs order here against Oorja illustrates that outcome directly. The decision further confirms that respectful criticism of an earlier Court of Appeal decision's reasoning does not satisfy the Carmon criteria for reopening that decision.

Source

DIFC
https://www.difccourts.ae/rules-decisions/judgments-orders/court-appeal/oqab-v-1-oorhna-2-oorja-3-omaran-4-omika-5-omnia-2026-difc-ca-004

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