When the Expert Report Became Part of the Financial Dispute

Technical Review of an Accounting Expert Report

Matter at a Glance

Dubai | 2026 | Employment & Incentive Dispute | Multi-Million-Dirham Financial Exposure

The Financial Context

An accounting expert report can materially influence the direction of a financial dispute.

That makes the review of the report itself an important financial exercise.

In this matter, the question was not whether to disagree with the appointed expert.

The question was whether the calculations, transaction treatment and financial conclusions could be reproduced from the underlying evidence.

The review identified several areas where the interpretation of payments, contractual entitlement and operating-profit calculations required closer examination.

The dispute involved more than one incentive mechanism.

The underlying records included:

a 1.5% incentive linked to qualifying supply contracts;
a separate incentive linked to operating profit;
payments recorded over time;
payroll and financial records;
and overseas operating results that affected the profit calculation.

The expert report recorded payments of approximately:

AED 1.45 million

Company records also reflected a supply-related incentive calculation of approximately:

AED 1.48 million

The financial significance of those figures depended on how the transactions were characterised.

Were the payments unexplained amounts recoverable from the employee?

Or were they payments made against a corresponding contractual entitlement?

That distinction changed the direction of the accounting analysis.

Where the Difficulty Arose

The review identified several issues requiring technical testing.

These included:

whether the entitlement and the payments had been read together;
whether calculations were arithmetically correct;
whether the same incentive percentage had been applied consistently;
whether operating profit had been reconstructed from the appropriate financial base;
and whether losses from overseas operations had been attributed to the correct period and extent.

One arithmetic comparison in the report treated the difference between approximately AED 1,449,945 and AED 911,208 as approximately AED 508,737.

The mathematical difference is approximately:

AED 538,737

The report also contained references to different percentages in separate parts of the analysis.

These issues did not automatically determine the dispute.

But they required the conclusions to be retested.

Our Work

WSCA reviewed the expert report against the underlying contractual and financial evidence, supported by the same professional judgement reflected in Muaiad M. Al-Hariri’s expert profile.

The work included:

tracing the incentive provisions;
comparing entitlement calculations with recorded payments;
checking arithmetic;
identifying inconsistent percentage references;
rebuilding the operating-profit analysis;
reviewing period allocation;
testing the effect of overseas operations;
and comparing the report’s conclusions with the accounting direction of the transactions.

The purpose was not to criticise the expert personally.

It was to test whether the financial reasoning could be reproduced from the evidence.

The Turning Point

The turning point was the direction of the accounting transaction.

A payment cannot be evaluated properly without first asking whether a corresponding entitlement existed.

The sequence should therefore be tested as:

entitlement → payment → remaining balance

rather than:

payment → unexplained amount → assumed liability

Once the contractual entitlement and the payment history were examined together, the same payment records could carry a materially different accounting meaning.

What the Review Showed

The technical review identified areas where:

arithmetic required correction;
percentage references required reconciliation;
contractual entitlement and payments needed to be evaluated together;
and the operating-profit base required reconstruction.

The reconstructed financial analysis produced an operating-profit base of approximately:

AED 42.95 million

At a 7.5% incentive rate, that would correspond to approximately:

AED 3.22 million

subject to the final treatment of the relevant adjustments and period-specific items.

The review also examined significant overseas losses included in the expert analysis and whether the full amount belonged within the relevant calculation period.

The result was not simply an alternative number.

It was a clearer map of which assumptions and financial treatments drove the difference between the analyses.

Why It Mattered

Reviewing an expert report should not begin with the objective of proving it wrong.

A stronger method is to test four things independently:

the documents,

the methodology,

the calculations,

and the conclusions.

If all four align, the conclusion becomes stronger.

If one does not align, the reviewer can identify precisely where the financial reasoning changes.

That is particularly important in disputes where a single expert calculation may materially influence the amount under consideration.

Related Services

Has an expert report materially affected your financial dispute?

We can test its calculations, methodology and financial conclusions against the underlying contracts, transactions and accounting evidence.

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