Our Team

Dr Peter Wilson is an international taxation adviser with more than 40 years of experience. Peter has advised companies, individuals, partnerships, trusts, foundations, collective investment funds, pension funds and governments on taxation, international tax law and associated planning and compliance, firstly from a base in Sydney, Australia, then London, New York and now in Dubai.

He also advises corporate service providers, financial institutions, investment managers, and administrators on their client taxation matters, together with FATCA, CRS and ESR reporting obligations. Dr Wilson also advises on obligations and controls to be implemented for tax risk mitigation. He also assists clients in defending domestic and cross-border disputes with taxation authorities and in subsequent taxation litigation before tribunals and courts, together with advising family lawyers on the taxation consequences of disputed family investment entities in contested divorces. He advises clients on regulatory matters and entity (companies, partnerships, trusts, foundations, stock option schemes) formation, including countries or territories in which the entities may be formed.

Dr Wilson’s practice includes the taxation considerations (including indirect and miscellaneous taxes) relevant to mergers and acquisitions, including demergers, splits and divisions; substantial public debt issuances, including restructure post-closing; cross-border financial transactions, both third party and intra-group; post-acquisition subsidiary and asset restructure; acquisition due diligence; individual and corporate redomiciliation; cross border services, intellectual property and profits; transfer pricing and international taxation conventions both bilateral and multilateral.

Over the years, he has advised clients on the cross-border taxation laws of more than 75 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America and Asia, including Australia and New Zealand.

Peter has practised as a taxation and business advisor in South Africa and the Middle East for in excess of 30 years. He has experience in several industry sectors, including healthcare, education, financial services, wholesale, retail and manufacturing.

His main focus is on strategy, family business and business improvement using experience gained in both Public Practice and in Commercial roles. Areas of expertise include operational due diligence, auditing, taxation, corporate restructuring, M&A, technology implementation, supply chain and contract negotiations.

Peter started his career as an Articled Clerk with a leading accounting and audit practice in South Africa. This was followed by a role as a Tax Inspector with the South African Revenue Service, where he was actively involved in the rollout of VAT by way of leading pre-VAT implementation education programs to business leaders and the public as part of a national rollout. He trained tax inspectors, issued advance tax rulings and led VAT and corporate tax inspection teams.  Peter is now heavily involved with VAT in the UAE and the Middle East generally.

Peter spent eight years as an audit and tax partner with Grant Thornton in South Africa, before taking up senior finance leadership roles with several well-known groups in the UAE, Qatar and South Africa. Peter has lived as well as worked in Qatar, and he now lives in the UAE.

Among Peter’s commitments, he is a founding partner of an award-winning Middle East accounting practice and a founding partner of a technology company focusing on digital transformation, automation and cyber security.

Peter is a qualified Chartered Accountant, CA(SA). He has a B.Com and a Postgraduate Diploma in Accountancy from the University of Port Elizabeth and an Advanced Taxation Certification from the University of South Africa.

Mr Mohammed Rashid Alhemrani Alshamsi is PB First Global Tax’s Chief Government Relations Officer. He is highly educated with a Bachelor of Science in Administration from the University of Washington, DC, United States of America and a Diploma in Customer Service Excellence.

Mohammed is a results-oriented professional with over 32 years of experience. His career and contributions have had a significant impact on the public and private sectors in the UAE. His ability to create and lead programs, as well as his involvement in strategic planning and governance, are highly accredited. He has a talent for leadership skills and driving positive change within organisations.

Mohammed has established and operated extremely successful projects at Government institutions such as the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, the Ministry of Interior, ENOC and the UAE’s Prime Minister’s Office.

Maria Khattar has extensive experience in international taxation and audit. She established herself as a trusted advisor with a proven track record of excellence in helping businesses navigate complex global tax landscapes. As a graduate of the American University of Beirut with a degree in Finance, speaking fluent Arabic and English and years of experience in the field, Maria has honed her expertise in advising multinational corporations ( including financial institutions), start-ups and individuals on cross-border tax compliance and planning. Her insights and guidance have saved clients substantial resources while ensuring full compliance. She specialises in financial instruments and financial institutions.

Maria started her career as an auditor at Ernst and Young and gained extensive experience in reviewing tax returns and ensuring that financial statements are compliant with the IFRS standards for various industries, including banking, factoring, sporting, hotels, casinos, electrical appliances and media.

Maria worked as an internal audit leader, auditing various banking processes and proposing to management value-added recommendations related to system enhancements, changes in internal procedures, and strengthening the internal controls. She is experienced in capital markets, treasury, liquidity and market risk, and trade finance.

As an in-house tax manager for Europe, the Middle East and Asia with a multinational group, she has also dealt with a range of tax-related obligations, from tax planning and compliance to international taxation.

Dr Ajay Kumar is an international commercial lawyer specialising in international taxation, development and financial crimes. Ajay started off as a qualified lawyer in India, and after more than 10 years of practice, principally as a litigation lawyer, he moved into academia. Subsequently, he qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales. Presently, he holds a full-time academic position with the University of Bradford, where he teaches on international taxation, Trusts and Banking & Finance. Before that, he held academic positions at different educational institutions in the UK, India and the UAE.

Dr Kumar was awarded a PhD in International Economic Law by the University of Manchester in 2015 for the thesis – ‘International Tax Coherence: A Development Perspective’.  The thesis is a work in progress and focuses on tax jurisdiction, and looks at the principles and practices of the international tax regime while evaluating its efficacy for offering development. This is being developed into a monograph for publication by 2024. He also holds a master’s degree in international Commercial Law from the University of Aberdeen, UK and an undergraduate degree in law from Mahatma Gandhi University, India. Ajay has also co-authored a book published by Kluwer on ‘The Public International Law of International Taxation: Text, Cases and Materials’, with Asif Qureshi.

Kennedy has close to 30 years of professional experience in dealing with international and domestic tax issues. He has worked as a Regional Manager for Africa, the Middle East and Latin America at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD) in the Netherlands, as a Senior Manager at Deloitte Zambia, as a SeniorTax Inspector at the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) and, on secondment, as a Tax Advisor at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in France.

Kennedy has managed numerous tax advisory assignments for major multinational enterprises in the mining, banking and financial, insurance, energy, telecommunication, construction, manufacturing and agricultural sectors. In tax policy, he has acted as a lead consultant on a number of assignments, including tax policy advisory and training for the Zambia Ministry of Finance, the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) and for many Governments and tax authorities in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.

Imran Shafi is a leading English silk specialising in criminal, fraud and money laundering matters.

He has been involved in several groundbreaking cases, and his advocacy, conference skills and practical experience are highly sought after.

Imran is well known for his incredible work ethic and dedication to representing his clients.

He is renowned for having cases discontinued, dismissed and successfully applying to exclude evidence. A number of his court of appeal cases are studied and written about in leading criminal defence textbooks.

In recent years, Imran’s practice has increasingly focused on fraud (including abusive transactions) and complex money laundering cases, which is ably suited due to his meticulous preparation, logical approach and understanding of accounting and financial evidence.

With these skills, Imran is well-suited to participate in compliance and litigation strategy sessions covering UAE corporate tax and VAT law, tax advocacy before the relevant UAE courts and working alongside advocates who have access rights in the UAE Courts on tax, which Imran does not.