Privacy Statement

Last revised: 15 August 2023

Privacy Statement Summary

Deloitte & Touche (M.E.) and its affiliated independent legal entities are compliant with all local laws related to Data Protection and in line with the changes in data protection law and to the extent applicable with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective 25 May 2018.

This privacy statement explains what information we gather about you, what we use that information for and to whom we give that information. It also sets out your rights in relation to your information and who you can contact for more information or queries. Click on the links below to take you to the more detailed sections of this statement:

This privacy statement applies to all licensed entities by Deloitte & Touche (M.E.) with registered office address at Themistokli, 41 Hawaii Tower, 6th floor, Nicosia Cyprus, and the entities we own or control (“Deloitte”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

We are committed to protecting your privacy and handling your information in an open and transparent manner.

This privacy statement sets out how we will collect, handle, store and protect information about you when:

  • providing services to you or our clients
  • you use “our Website” or
  • performing any other activities that form part of the operation of our business.

When we refer to “our Website” or “this Website” in this policy we mean the specific webpages of deloitte.com designated as Middle East in the upper right hand corner, and to specific webpages with a URL commencing http://www.deloitte.com/xe.

Deloitte.com is comprised of various global, country, regional and practice specific websites, each of which is provided by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”) or one of its independent member firms or their related entities (collectively, the “Deloitte Network”). To learn more about DTTL, the member firms of DTTL and their related entities, please see About Deloitte.

This privacy statement also contains information about when we share your personal information with other members of the Deloitte Network and other third parties (for example, our service providers).

In this privacy statement, your information is sometimes called “personal data” or “personal information”. We may also sometimes collectively refer to handling, collecting, protecting and storing your personal information as “processing” such personal information.

Please note that the other country and regional websites contained within deloitte.com are provided by other entities within the Deloitte Network and are not provided by us. Such websites, as well as other websites that may be linked to this Website, are not governed by this privacy statement. We encourage visitors to review the privacy statements on each of these other websites before disclosing any personal information.

In the course of providing services to you or our client and performing due diligence checks in connection with our services (or discussing possible services we might provide), we will collect or obtain personal data about you.  We may also collect personal data from you when you use this Website.

We may collect or obtain such data because you give it to us (for example in a form on our Website), because other people give that data to us (for example your employer or adviser, or third party service providers that we use to help operate our business) or because it is publicly available.

We may also collect or obtain personal data from you because we observe or infer that data about you from the way you interact with us or others. For example, to improve your experience when you use this Website and ensure that it is functioning effectively, we (or our service providers) may use cookies (small text files stored in a user’s browser) and Web beacons which may collect personal data. Additional information on how we use cookies and other tracking technologies and how you can control these can be found in our cookie notice.

The personal data that we collect or obtain may include: your name; age; date of birth; gender; e-mail address; home address; country of residence; lifestyle and social circumstances (for example, your  pastimes); family circumstances (for example, your marital status and dependents); employment and education details (for example, the organization you work for, your job title and your education details); financial and tax-related information (for example your income and tax residency); your postings on any blogs, forums, wikis and any other social media applications and services that we provide; your IP address; your browser type and language; your access times; complaint details; details of how you use our products and services; details of how you like to interact with us and other similar information.

The personal data we collect may also include so called ‘sensitive’ or ‘special categories’ of personal data, such as details about your: [dietary requirements (for example, where Deloitte would like to provide you with lunch during a meeting), health (for example, so that we can make reasonable accommodations for you in our buildings, products and services) and sexual orientation (for example if you provide us with details of your spouse or partner).]

The types of personal data and special categories of personal data that we collect may vary depending on the nature of the services that we provide to you or our client, or how you use our Website. In some rare circumstances, we might also gather other special categories of personal data about you because you volunteer that data to us or we are required to gather that data as a result of legal requirements imposed on us.

Where we are provided with personal data about you by our client, we take steps to ensure that the client has complied with the privacy laws and regulations relevant to that information; this may include, for example, that the client has provided you with notice of the collection (and other matters) and has obtained any necessary consent for us to process that information as described in this privacy statement.

We understand the importance of protecting children's privacy. Our Website and services are not designed for, or intentionally targeted at, children. It is not our policy to intentionally collect or store information about children.

Use of personal information to provide services to our clients

We will use your personal data to provide you or our client with services. As part of this, we may use your personal data in the course of correspondence relating to the services.  Such correspondence may be with you, our client, other members of the Deloitte Network, our service providers or competent authorities.  We may also use your personal data to conduct due diligence checks relating to the services. 

Because we provide a wide range of services to our clients, the way we use personal data in relation to our services also varies. For example, we might use personal data:

  • about a client’s employees to help those employees manage their tax affairs when working overseas
  • about a client’s employees and customers in the course of conducting an audit (or similar activity) for a client
  • about a client to help him/her complete a tax return.

Use of personal information for other activities that form part of the operation of our business

We may also use your personal data for the purposes of, or in connection with:

  • applicable legal or regulatory requirements
  • requests and communications from competent authorities
  • client account opening and other administrative purposes
  • financial accounting, invoicing and risk analysis purposes
  • client relationship purposes, which may involve: (i) sending you thought leadership or details of our products and services that we think might be of interest to you; (ii) contacting you to receive feedback on services; and (iii) contacting you for other market or research purposes;
  • recruitment and business development purposes (for example testimonials from a client’s employees may be used as part of our recruitment and business development materials with that employee’s permission)
  • services we receive from our professional advisors, such as lawyers, accountants and consultants
  • protecting our rights and those of our clients.

Use of personal information collected via our Website

In addition to the purposes connected to the operation of our business above, we may also use your personal data collected via our Website:

  • to manage and improve our Website
  • to tailor the content of our Website to provide you with a more personalized experience and draw your attention to information about our products and services that may be of interest to you
  • to manage and respond to any request you submit through our Website.

We are required by law to set out in this privacy statement the legal grounds on which we rely in order to process your personal data. 

As a result, we use your personal data for the purposes outlined above because : [(a) of our legitimate interests in the effective delivery of our services to you or our client; (b) of our legitimate interests in the effective and lawful operation of our business so long as such interests are not outweighed by your interests; (c) of the legal and regulatory obligations that we are subject to, such as keeping records for tax purposes or providing information to a public body or law enforcement agency or (d) the information is required in order to provide our services to you or our client.

To the extent that we process any sensitive personal data relating to you for any of the purposes outlined above, we will do so because either: [(i) you have given us your explicit consent to process that data; (ii) we are required by law to process that data in order to ensure we meet our ‘know your client’ and ‘anti-money laundering’ obligations (or other legal obligations imposed on us); (iii) the processing is necessary to carry out our obligations under employment, social security or social protection law; (iv) the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims or (v) you have made the data [manifestly] public.].

Where we are legally required to obtain your explicit consent to provide you with certain marketing materials, we will only provide you with such marketing materials where we have obtained such consent from you.

In connection with one or more of the purposes outlined in the “How we use information about you” section above, we may disclose details about you to: other members of the Deloitte Network; third parties that provide services to us and/or the Deloitte Network; competent authorities (including courts and authorities regulating us or another member of the Deloitte Network) and other third parties that reasonably require access to personal information relating to you for one or more of the purposes outlined in the “How do we use information about you?” section above.

Our Website may host various blogs, forums, wikis and other social media applications that allow you to share content with other users (collectively “Social Media Applications”). Importantly, any personal information that you contribute to these Social Media Applications can be read, collected and used by other users of the application. We have little or no control over these other users and, therefore, we cannot guarantee that any information that you contribute to any Social Media Applications will be handled in accordance with this privacy statement.

Please note that some of the recipients of your personal information referenced above may be based in countries outside of the European Union whose laws may not provide the same level of data protection. In such cases, we will ensure that there are adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal information that comply with our legal obligations. The adequate safeguard might be a data transfer agreement with the recipient based on standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission for transfers of personal data to third countries.

Further details of the transfers described above and the adequate safeguards used by Deloitte in respect of such transfers (including copies of relevant agreements) are also available from us by contacting dmeprivacy@deloitte.com.

We may also need to disclose your personal data if required to do so by law, by a regulator or during legal proceedings.

We may share non-personal, de-identified and aggregated information with third parties for several purposes, including data analytics, research, submissions, thought leadership and promotional purposes.

We use a range of physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your personal information secure, accurate and up to date. These measures include:

  • education and training to relevant staff to ensure they are aware of our privacy obligations when handling personal data
  • administrative and technical controls to restrict access to personal information on a ‘need to know’ basis
  • technological security measures, including fire walls, encryption and anti-virus software
  • physical security measures, such as staff security passes to access our premises.
  • breach procedures, and security incident management.

Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal information, the transmission of data over the internet (including by e-mail) is never completely secure. We endeavor to protect personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to us or by us.

We will hold your personal data on our systems for the longest of the following periods: (i) as long as is necessary for the relevant activity or services; (ii) any retention period that is required by law; (iii) the end of the period in which litigation or investigations might arise in respect of the services.

You have various rights in relation to your personal information. In particular, you have a right to:

  • obtain confirmation that we are processing your personal data and request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
  • ask that we update the personal data we hold about you, or correct such personal data that you think is incorrect or incomplete
  • ask that we delete personal data that we hold about you, or restrict the way in which we use such personal data
  • withdraw consent to our processing of your personal data (to the extent such processing is based on consent)
  • receive a copy of the personal data concerning you, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to transmit such personal data to another party (to the extent the processing is based on consent or a contract
  • object to our processing of your personal data.

To exercise any of your rights, or if you have any other questions or complaint about our use of your personal data, please email dmeprivacy@deloitte.com. You may also use these contact details if you wish to make a complaint to us relating to your privacy.

We may modify or amend this privacy statement from time to time.

To let you know when we make changes to this privacy statement, we will amend the revision date at the top of this page. The new modified or amended privacy statement will apply from that revision date. Therefore, we encourage you to periodically review this statement to be informed about how we are protecting your information.