Privacy policy

Privacy policy

lecocqassociate Group (as defined below) is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy provides you with details of how we collect, manage, store, use or generally process your Personal Data (as defined below) and the specific rights and options that you have in this respect. Please also refer to our Cookie Policy (attached asSchedule 1 hereunder) which explains the use of cookies and other web tracking pixels via our website.

We processes Personal Data in compliance with our obligations under the applicable data protection legislation, including but not limited to:

(i)         DubaiInternational Financial Centre (“DIFC”) Law No. 5 of 2020 on Data Protection and related regulations (as amended from time to time);

(ii)       Abu DhabiGlobal Market (“ADGM”) Data ProtectionRegulations 2021 and related rules (as amended from time to time);

(iii)      SwissFederal Act on Data Protection (as amended from time to time);

(iv)      EuropeanUnion (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (as amended from time to time); and  

(v)       Any other relevant data protection legislation (as applicable to the relevant lecocqassociate Entity)  

    (collectively, “DP Laws and Regulations”)

Personal data refers to any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person (the “Personal Data”).

Responsibility of your Personal Data

lecocqassociateGroup (as defined below) is responsible for your PersonalData. lecocqassociate Group consists of four (4) internationaloffices: lecocqassociate, a boutique law firm in Geneva; lecocqassociate ltd. a regulatory advisory practice in Malta; lecocqassociate (DIFC) Ltd., a structuring advisory practice in DIFC and lecocqassociate legal ltd., a legal consultancy in ADGM (collectively, the "lecocqassociate Group" and individually, a “lecocqassociate Entity”).

Specifically, your Personal Data will be controlled by the lecocqassociate Entity that you have instructed or that is providing services or communication to you in the relevant jurisdiction. However, please note that your Personal Data can be transferred within the lecocqassociate Group in accordance with the DP Laws and Regulations.

Type ofPersonal Data being collected

The PersonalData that we collect about you may include:

  • Contact information, such as your name, job title, postal address, including your home address (where you have provided this to us), business address, telephone number,  mobile phone number, fax number and email address;
  • Payment data, such as data  necessary for processing payments (to the extent relevant) and fraud prevention, including bank account/credit/debit card numbers,  security code numbers and other related billing information;
  • Further business information necessarily processed in a project or client contractual relationship with  lecocqassociate Group or voluntarily provided by you, such as instructions given, payments made, requests and projects;
  • Information collected from publicly available resources, integrity data bases, risk screening tools and credit agencies;
  • If legally required for compliance  purposes such as for client due diligence and any information about  relevant and significant litigation or other legal proceedings against you  or a third party related to you and interaction with you which may be  relevant for antitrust purposes;
  • Other Personal Data regarding your  preferences where it is relevant to the services that we, as  lecocqassociate Group provide;
  • Details of your visits to our   premises or calls made to us; and
  • Personal Data about your  membership in a professional or trade association or union, health  Personal Data, details of dietary preferences (relevant to events in which     we invite you) and details of any criminal record you may have.

Collection of your Personal Data

We may collectPersonal Data about you in a number of circumstances, including:

  • When you or your organisation seek     any type of advice and/or service from the relevant lecocqassociate Entity (e.g.     legal, regulatory, consultancy, corporate services);
  • When you or your organisation     browse, make an enquiry or otherwise interact on our website;
  • When you or your organisation     offer to provide or provide services to us.

In some circumstances, we collect Personal Data about you from a third party source.For example, we may collect Personal Data from your organisation, other organisations with whom you have dealings, government agencies, credit reporting agency, an information or service provider or from a publicly available record. In such cases, the purposes for the collection of yourPersonal Data from a third party source will still be the Permitted Purpose (as defined below) mentioned in this Privacy Notice.

The requirement of providing us with your Personal Data and the consequences in the case you do not provide such

In instances where your Personal Data is processed on the basis of your consent, should you choose not to consent or to provide your Personal Data, then lecocqassociate Group may not be able provide you with the requested service and/or be able to take the necessary action.

By way of an example, in instances where your Personal Data is processed on the basis of consent, as a result of not receiving your consent, we may not be able to:

  • process your instructions in relation to any service required from lecocqassociate Group; and/or
  • provide you with access to a web offering or newsletter; and/or
  • carry out a legally required compliance screening.

In these cases, it will unfortunately not be possible for us to provide you with what you request without the relevant Personal Data. Moreover, in the course of our relationship, your decision not to provide us with ongoing personal information as might be required for anti-money laundering and sanctions or other regulatory purposes, might lead to lecocqassociate Group having to terminate the relationship with you.

We will notify you accordingly of the purposes for which your Personal Data is being required and whether there will be any detrimental effects in the case that you do not provide such Personal Data.

Purpose of processing your Personal Data

We may use yourPersonal Data for the following purposes only (the "Permitted Purposes"):

  • As applicable to the  lecocqassociate Entity, providing legal advice, regulatory advice,   consultancy, corporate service provider or other services as instructed or   requested by you or your organisation;
  • Managing and administering your or  your organisation's business relationship with lecocqassociate Group,  including processing payments (to the extent applicable),  accounting, auditing, billing collection and support services;
  • Managing and administering any request for a service made by you or by your organisation;
  • Compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations (such as record keeping obligations), compliance screening or recording obligations (for example  anti-money laundering, sanctions financial and credit check and fraud and  crime prevention and detection purposes), which may include automated  checks of your contact data or other information you provide about your  identity against applicable sanctioned-party lists and contacting you to  confirm your identity in case of a potential match or recording interaction with you which may be relevant for compliance purposes;
  • To analyse and improve our  services and communications to you in relation to the services which we  provide to you or to your organisation;
  • Protecting the security of and  managing access to our premises, IT and communication systems, online platforms, websites and other systems, preventing and detecting security  threats, fraud or other criminal or malicious activities;
  • For monitoring and assessing  compliance with our internal policies and standards;
  • To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and requests anywhere in the world, including reporting to and/or being audited by national and international regulatory bodies;
  • To comply with court orders and  exercises and/or defend our legal rights; and
  • For any purpose related and/or ancillary to any of the above or any other purpose for which your Personal  Data was provided to us.  

In instances, whereyou have expressly given us your consent, we may process your PersonalData also for the following purposes:

  • Communicating with you through the channels you have approved to keep you up to date on the latest legal  developments, announcements, and other information about our     services, (including newsletters and other information) as     well as lecocqassociate Group events and projects;
  • Customer surveys, marketing campaigns, market analysis, or other promotional activities or events; or
  • lecocqassociate Group may also undertake business development and marketing activities. In this case,  where we rely on your consent for such purposes, you have the right to  object at any time to the processing of your Personal Data for such  purposes.

We will not use your Personal Data for taking any automated decisions affecting you or creating profiles.

Depending upon the specific Permitted Purposes we use your Personal Data, we may process yourPersonal Data on one or more of the following legal grounds:

  • Because processing is necessary     for the performance of your instruction or other contract with you or your     organisation and for us to be able to provide you with the requested     service;
  • To comply with our legal and/or     regulatory obligations which become applicable to lecocqassociate Group     from time to time;
  • Because processing is necessary     for purposes of our legitimate interest or those of any third party     recipients that receive your Personal Data in managing our business     including legal, personnel, administrative and management purposes and for     the prevention and detection of crime, provided that such interests are     not overridden by your interests or your fundamental rights and freedoms.

In addition, where relevant and applicable, the processing may be based on your consent where you have expressly given that to us (as described above).

International transfer of your Personal Data

lecocqassociate Group is a globally active firm. Hence, we may transfer your Personal Data outside of the EU, Switzerland, DIFC and ADGM (as applicable) for the Permitted Purposes as described above. This may include countries which do not provide the same level of protection in comparison to the data protection laws applicable to the lecocqassociate Group. We will ensure that any such international transfers are made subject to appropriate or suitable safeguards as required by the DP Laws and Regulations. This includes (if applicable) entering into the standard contractual clauses as provided for by the applicable DP Laws and Regulations.

lecocqassociate Group will at all times ensure compliance with the applicable DP Laws andRegulations. We will also require our agents, consultants and sub-contractors and others who are outside the EU, Switzerland, DIFC and ADGM (as applicable) and to whom we transfer your Personal Data to ensure that the level of data protection is similar to the level maintained by the relevant lecocqassociate Entity.

You may contact us anytime using the contact details further below if you would like further information on the above.

Personal Data about third parties which you provide to us

If you provide Personal Data to us about someone else (such as one of your directors or employees, or someone with whom you have business dealings) it is your responsibility to ensure that you are entitled to disclose that Personal Data to us and that, without us taking any further steps, we may collect, use and disclose that Personal Data as described in this Privacy Policy.

In particular, you must ensure the individual concerned is aware of the various matters detailed in this Privacy Policy, as those matters relate to that individual, including our identity, how to contact us, our purposes of collection, ourPersonal Data disclosure practices (including international transfers ofPersonal Data), the individual's rights as data subject and the consequences if the Personal Data is not provided (as detailed above).

Please ensure that you provide a copy of this Privacy Policy to any third party whosePersonal Data you provide to us.

Security measures for the safekeeping of your Personal Data

We will take appropriate technical and organisational measures to keep your Personal Data confidential and secure in accordance with our internal procedures covering the storage, disclosure of and access to Personal Data. Personal Data may be kept on our personal data technology systems, those of our service providers or in paper files.

Updating yourPersonal Data

If any of thePersonal Data that you have provided to us changes, or if you wish to cancel any request you have made to us, or if you become aware that we have any inaccurate Personal Data about you, please let us know by contacting us using the contact details mentioned hereunder.

We will not be responsible for any losses arising from any inaccurate, inauthentic, deficient or incomplete Personal Data that you provide to us.

Retention period

We will retain yourPersonal Data for as long as required to fulfil the Permitted Purposes for which it was collected, to protect our legitimate business interest, to assert or defend against legal claims or as required by law.

Your PersonalData will be deleted in the following circumstances:

  • when it is no longer reasonably     required for the Permitted Purposes; or
  • when you withdraw your consent (where     applicable); and
  • when we are not legally permitted     to continue processing such Personal Data.

Your rights

  • the right to obtain information     regarding the processing of your Personal Data and access to the Personal     Data which we hold about you;
  • the right to withdraw your consent     to our processing of your Personal Data at any time, if relevant. Please     note, however, that we may still be entitled to process your Personal Data     if we have another legitimate reason (other than consent) for doing     so;
  • in some circumstances, the right     to receive some Personal Data in a structured, commonly used and     machine-readable format and/or request that we transmit those data to a     third party where this is technically feasible;
  • the right to request that we     rectify your Personal Data if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
  • the right to request that we erase     your Personal Data in certain circumstances. Please note that there may be     circumstances where you ask us to erase your Personal Data but we are     legally entitled to retain it;
  • the right to object to, and the     right to request that we restrict the processing of your Personal Data in     certain circumstances. Again, there may be circumstances where you object     to, or ask us to restrict, the processing of your Personal Data but we are     legally entitled to continue processing your Personal Data and / or to     refuse that request; and
  • the right to lodge a complaint     with the local data protection regulator if you think that any of your     rights have been infringed by us.

If you wish todo any of the above please use the contact details provided below.

We may request proof of identification to verify your request. We reserve the right to charge you a reasonable administrative fee for any manifestly unfounded or excessive requests concerning your access to your Personal Data, and for any additional copies of the Personal Data you request from us.

We will respond to your request in writing, or orally if requested, as soon as practicable and in any event not more than within one (1) month after of receipt of your request. In exceptional cases, we may extend this period by two (2) months and we will tell you why.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may take your complaint to the relevant data protection regulator.

Updates to this Privacy Policy

This PrivacyPolicy may be updated from time to time in order to reflect any changes to th eway in which we process your Personal Data or changing legal and/or regulatory requirements.

In case of any such changes, we will post the changed Privacy Policy on our website. The changes will take effect as soon as they are posted on our website. In the case of substantial changes being made to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you in writing of such.

Contactdetails

If you wouldlike to contact us with any queries or comments, please contact our DataProtection Officer by using the below contact details:

EU and Switzerland  

lecocqassociate ltd

Swiss UrbanFactory

The RegulatorySuite

5 St. FrederickStreet Valletta

Malta VLT 1470

Emailaddress: data@lecocqassociate.com

ContactNumber: +35622482910

DIFC, Dubai

lecocqassociate(DIFC) Ltd

Unit 15-32Central Park Towers, Office Towers

DIFC

P.o. Box 506652,Dubai

United ArabEmirates

Emailaddress: data@lecocqassociate.com

ContactNumber: +971 4 2427843

ADGM, Abu Dhabi

lecocqassociatelegal ltd.

Al Sila Tower,Office 2478

Al Maryah Island

Abu Dhabi GlobalMarket Square

P.O.Box 128666,Abu Dhabi

UAE

Emailaddress: data@lecocqassociate.com

ContactNumber: +971 2 6948693

 

Complaints

If you are notsatisfied with our use of your Personal Data or our response to any request byyou to exercise your rights, you have the right to lodge a complaint with thecompetent data protection authority by using the following contact details:

For DIFC, Dubai

Telephone:     +971 4 362 2222

Website:          www.difc.ae/business/operating/data-protection

Email:             commissioner@dp.difc.ae

For ADGM, Abu Dhabi

Telephone:     +971 2 333 8888

Website:          https://www.adgm.com/operating-in-adgm/office-of-data-protection

Email:             Data.Protection@adgm.com