Our Team

The lawyers on these files

Two applicants with identical funds and identical intentions can have entirely different experiences of this programme, and the difference is almost always documentary. One can evidence a decade cleanly; the other cannot, and did not realise it until the questions started.

The lawyers below work on the second case as much as the first.

Iryna Berenstein

Corporate & Investment Law
Fifteen years advising private clients on investment regulation, wealth structuring and compliance, with practice spanning the Israeli, Emirati, British and American markets. In citizenship work she handles the origin-of-funds file — the part that is rarely the reason people come and frequently the reason applications stall.

Tarek Muhammad

Senior Legal Advisor
Senior legal adviser with fifteen years in criminal and international law, sanctions work and compliance, much of it spanning several jurisdictions in a single matter. On citizenship applications he deals with adverse history and prior refusals: material that is survivable when disclosed and damaging when found.

Christina Abdel Ahad

International Business & Human Rights
Dual-qualified lawyer with an LLM in International Business Law, practising in cross-border transactions, arbitration and wealth management. She works in Arabic, English and French, which is less a convenience than a requirement when certificates in three languages must say the same thing.

Marcin Ajs

International & White-Collar Criminal Law
Partner at Dziekański Chowaniec Ajs and a European Criminal Bar Association member since 2014, practising international and white-collar criminal law. On these applications his role is to identify, in advance, what a compliance review will find worth asking about.

Working with us

Enquiries are answered by the lawyer who would take the matter on. The opening question is always whether the file can survive examination, because the examination is paid for whether or not it is passed, and an honest answer at that point is worth more than an encouraging one.

No one can guarantee a grant of citizenship or name a date for it. The Commission publishes no timetable and decides at its own discretion. What can be said in advance is which parts of a file will attract questions and what should be prepared before they are asked.

Getting in touch

Write through the contact page with an outline — nationality, who else is applying, where you have lived, and what evidences your funds.