First: The Commercial Code of the United Arab Emirates 1993.

Records keeping Requirement

Article 31:

• Merchants will be required to keep such books as required by the nature of their
business at least for five years.( According to article 38 merchants who use
microfilm or other information storage system are exempted from the above
provisions).
Article 32:

• Banks and companies shall keep their books and correspondence for the same
period on microfilm or other modern information storage systems in lieu of
retaining the originals.

Types of documents to be kept:

• A daily journal that contains all financial operations performed.

• A general ledger book containing all accounting operations posted from daily
journal based on actual supporting documents particularly amounts related to
cash, bank, partner, drawings, creditors, debtors, proceeds and expenditure. also
details of the stock held at the end of the financial year.

• True copies of correspondence, invoices and other documents sent, mailed or

received in connection with the business.

Secondly: Retention Guidelines according to many universal polices

• Employment documents shall be kept for the length of the employee tenure and
for an additional period of five years after the employee leaves.
• Accounting and corporate tax records shall be kept permanently.
• Legal records including contracts, land records, intellectual property documents
shall be kept permanently.
• Electronic records: (including computer disks, emails, hard drives and web pages)
in such case employees and consultants who perform maintenance on computers
and electronic data should be consulted to achieve consistency.