a qualified Dutch Lawyer (Advocaat) registered with the Court of Law at Amsterdam, Netherlands and permanently licensed by the Netherlands Bar Association (Landelijke Orde van Advocaten) to hold offices outside the Netherlands.
He is the founder and Chairman to the Board of the (Middle East Legal and Business Advice or) MELBA Group of Companies, a European-Arab network law firm with offices in Amsterdam, Cairo, Dubai and Fujairah and a cross border legal practice dealing with corporate, commercial, banking, finance and compliance issues as well as questions of good governance, human rights and the rule of law. In that light, is the founder and chairman of MELBA Foundation, an Amsterdam based NGO promoting the Rule of Law by providing hands-on training courses to State actors, including parliamentarians, judges and the civil servants supporting their work, in the Middle East and Latin America in close cooperation with leading specialists from the EU and the regions themselves. Mauritius Wijffels has previously held the position of associate lawyer at Clifford Chance, regional legal counsel for Latin-America and the Caribbean at ABN AMRO Bank and senior manager business development for international retail banking at Rabobank International.

His exposure throughout the years to private and in-house corporate practice, working on the business side of banking, running a business as independent lawyer/entrepreneur and his life-long interest in the Middle East, Latin America and human rights have allowed him to season into a versatile legal adviser willing to create sound solutions from all of legal, business and societal perspectives with a particular focus on the two aforementioned regions.

Mauritius Wijffels works from Cairo and Dubai while keeping a European representative office in Amsterdam. He is fluent in Dutch, English, French and Portuguese and has solid working knowledge of Arabic, German and Spanish.