IslamicFinance.de

UM Financial Inc and UM Capital Inc the receiver, Grant Thornton, is still continuing to reclaim $1.9 m in gold paid to the financial manager of Multicultural Consultancy Canada, Joseph Adam.
The mystery of the missing gold has moved 5,700 miles away to Egypt where Adam told the receiver through his lawyer that he gave the gold to unnamed scholars before the court ordered its return.

A man named Omar Kalair was told to rendezvous in the dead of the night in a deserted suburban parking lot and hand over a consignment of gold and silver bullion to achieve recognition on the debts of a secretive organization.
The bizarre payment of $2.1m in gold and silver made by Kalair to Joseph Adam, the finance manager of the newly formed firm Multicultural Consultancy Canada, was for Shari’ah compliance services the MCC supplied to the Canadian Islamic mortgage company.
Kalair and Mufti Yusuf Panchbhaya, chairman of this local Shari’ah board, were deposed by the receiver Grant Thornton to explain the transfer of gold and silver to Adam outside a suburban drug store in early October, three days before the court ordered UM Financial Inc into receivership. A month later, the gold had disappeared and Adam had flown Canada for Egypt. The receiver tries now to get permission from the court to enter Adam’s store, with assistance from the sheriff in order to recover the missing gold.

Although UM Financial Inc went into receivership back in October, the consequences of the bankruptcy are beginning to be noticed only now.
Besides the fact that the case risk is giving a bad name to sharia-compliant finance in North America, it also poses a series of legal hurdles that could have as a result to mortgage holders the losing of their homes.
Since the use of interest is forbidden in Islam, sharia-compliant mortgages are organized so that lender and homebuyer share the costs of purchasing a home. Instead of paying interest, homeowners preffer to rent the property from the lender while gradually purchasing the outstanding share of their house.