Translated by Sabrin Qadah 

Businessman Riad Tawfiq Sadeq was born in the village of Deir al-Qasi in the Galilee in 1943. Following the Israeli occupation, Deir al-Qasi was evacuated by the bombing and the attacks of the Israeli gangs. Sadiq was deported with his family to Lebanon in 1948. There, he completed his secondary education, and in 1959, joined the American University in Beirut and earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering.

Sadiq began his career in Saudi Arabia, where he worked in the Ministry of Transport. During a brief period, he was promoted to occupy the post of chief engineer of the Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia.

In 1967, he moved to work in al-Mullah Contracting Company in Dubai as a manager of Sharjah Road - Ras Al Khaimah project, and within a record time, he was promoted to become the artistic director of the company.

In 1970, with Al Habtoor partnership, he was able to establish Al Habtoor Group, which is one of the largest companies in the UAE. Currently, he chairs the board of "Al Habtoor Leighton," group, which currently employs more than 35 thousand people. The company has operations in many of the Gulf States and other countries in the Middle East, and has achieved net production value of more than $ 3 billion.

Al-Sadiq owns and Chairs the Board of Construction Machinery Management Center, a company specializing in construction machinery. He is the owner and president of Five Star "Grand Millennium" hotel in Dubai. He holds the Emirati citizenship.

Sadiq is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Palestine Studies and the American University in Sharjah. He also Chairs Resource Development Committee at the American University in Sharjah, and is the vice president of the Board of Governor of the "Pearl" initiative.

Sadiq has many charitable acts in Palestine, among which is the recently submitted four million US dollars to the University of Birzeit for the construction of a building of the Faculty of Law and Public Administration that will carry his name. That is in addition to the establishment of " Riad Tawfiq sadiq wakfeyyeh" for Scholarship beneficiaries.