The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has announced it withdrew the Authorised Individual status and imposed a restriction on Trevor Conway, a Senior Executive Officer at the DFSA-authorised firm Tradition, the interdealer broker arm of Swiss-based OTC interdealer broker Compagnie Financière Tradition SA. Trevor Conway lost his DFSA-authorised status following an investigation into his conduct.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has announced it withdrew the Authorised Individual status and imposed a restriction on Trevor Conway, a Senior Executive Officer at the DFSA-authorised firm Tradition, the interdealer broker arm of Swiss-based OTC interdealer broker Compagnie Financière Tradition SA.

Trevor Conway lost his DFSA-authorised status following an investigation into his conduct in relation to Tradition’s Commodity Murabaha Broking Desk.

The broking desk facilitated the purchase and supply of title to metal commodities (Warrants), sourced from suppliers for use by the Desk’s clients, who are mainly banks, to substantiate their Murabaha-based transactions with their respective customers.

FAILURES AT “MURABAHA” BROKING DESK

Murabaha is an Islamic financing structure that works as a sales contract, fixing the price of goods or items as required by a customer, inclusive of a pre-agreed profit margin.

According to the DFSA, Tradition’s Commodity Murabaha Broking Desk made available Warrant numbers taken from Warrants they had previously used, thereby not providing its clients with current title to metal commodities. This lasted for two years and nine months.

The regulator also claims Trevor Conway was aware that holding Warrants representing title to metal commodities was a precondition for entering into Murabaha transactions by its clients and that the broking desk had not held any valid Warrants over the relevant period after losing its Warrant supplier.

The senior executive did not take steps to stop the misleading practice and failed to stop the desk from misrepresenting to a client that it had a supplier providing Warrants when, in fact, the supplier had ceased to provide them, the DFSA continued.

The abovementioned actions were considered by the DFSA as “lack of competence”. The regulator has decided to strip him from any licensed function as “he is not fit and proper to perform” such activities in connection with the provision of Financial Services in or from the DIFC.