Expert Blue, 23rd floor

The UAE layer of this investigation was hiding in an archived corporate website — and it is considerably more specific than a name in a footer.

What the group says about itself

Sama Alsham Group's own site, captured in 2015, carries a page for each of its subsidiaries. The one for AMH Group reads:

AMH Group is based at the landmark location in Dubai, the Emirates Towers. Established in 2013, AMH is a group within the mother Sama Al Sham Group, that runs and operates the UAE branch.

It goes on to list what AMH holds: a chain of Syrian restaurants called Tamary, Little Village Nursery, a media production house called Sama Al Fan, and a general trading company — Expert Blue.

What Expert Blue says about itself

Expert Blue's own site, archived a year earlier, is more forthcoming than most:

• "Expert Blue L.L.C, is a privately owned United Arab Emirates-based company operating through its headquarter in Dubai."
• Address: Office Building, 23rd floor, Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai
• Phone +971 4 3799968, fax +971 4 3799639
• Footer, on every page: "A member of AMH Investment Group"

And the business is not abstract. The news items are about animals:

• 10,000 sheep exported to Qatar
• 3,000 sheep exported to the UAE
• Cattle exported to Kuwait during Ramadan 2013
• Cattle-raising started in 2014

A Dubai general-trading and livestock-export vehicle, held through a UAE holding company that its Syrian parent openly describes as "the UAE branch", whose group CEO is a sanctioned individual. That is a much better-shaped lead than a hosting company's name in a WHOIS field.

The registrar's logs agree

The website evidence is a decade old and both sites are now suspended, so it is worth having something that does not depend on either.

RDAP gives it. Two domains were created within one second of each other:

expertbluefzc.com   2013-11-06T05:57:05Z   Dynadot Inc
amhgroupjobs.com    2013-11-06T05:57:06Z   Dynadot Inc

One second apart means one checkout, in one registrar account. The AMH and Expert Blue brands were bought by the same hands on the same afternoon — and 2013 is exactly the year AMH's own page gives as its founding date.

Note the suffix on the first: FZC, the UAE free-zone company form.

The registry confirms it

This was the lead to take to a registry, and it has now been taken there. The Dubai company registry lists an active company under the fuller legal name Expert Blue General Trading L.L.C., CBLS 273399, registry number 677135:

• Incorporated 2012-10-04, as a mainland L.L.C. — not a free-zone entity
• Paid and authorized capital both 600,000 AED
• Registered for exactly the two activities the archived site described: livestock trading (code 512107) and general trading (code 521904)
• Arabic name on file: اكسبرت بلو للتجارة العامة ش.ذ.م.م

Two things are worth flagging rather than smoothing over. First, the registry's incorporation date is a year earlier than the 2013 founding date AMH Group's own site gives — a minor discrepancy, unresolved. Second, and more interesting: the registry calls it a mainland limited liability company, which sits oddly against the FZC suffix on expertbluefzc.com — FZC being the free-zone company form. Either that domain names a distinct free-zone sister entity that hasn't turned up yet, or the suffix was a brand and domain choice with no legal meaning behind it. Worth checking DED Dubai and the free-zone registries specifically for a second, separate "Expert Blue FZC" filing before assuming the two are the same entity.