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At the IAAR 2011 Cross-Border Asset Tracing and Recovery Conference we met and learned from globally recognised experts in asset recovery. 

Meet the Conference Chairs

JAMES EARP is a Partner in the Recovery and Reorganisation Practice at Grant Thornton UK LLP. With more than 20 years experience in all aspects of recovery and reorganization, he specializes in investigation and proceeds of crime work.  He leads a team of more than 70 professionals focused on recovery actions in the UK and overseas and his international experience has included assignments in Europe, Australia, South Africa, Canada and offshore jurisdictions. He has received court receivership appointments under the Criminal Justice System to investigate the proceeds of crime, as management receiver and to enforce confiscation orders. He is a frequent speaker on fraud and asset tracing and is a regular contributor to publications including two chapters in the book "Fraud: Law, Practice and Procedure".


MARTIN KENNEY is the founder of a specialist, multi-jurisdictional investigative and litigation practice in Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, Martin Kenney is "one of the world's leading authorities on the legal aspects of freezing and seizing assets in multiple jurisdictions," according to Offshore Alert of Miami.

In June 1999, Kenney was appointed to the Working Group on Government Corruption of the Society of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London, which issued proposals to reform the law on abuse of power and government corruption in the United Kingdom. He is an active member of the Business Crime Committee and Section on Insolvency, Restructuring and Creditors Rights of the International Bar Association. He is also exclusive member for the British Virgin Islands of Fraudnet, a specialist network of leading fraud and business crime lawyers of the Commercial Crime Services Division of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Kenney's clients have included international banks, insurers and other private and governmental institutions. He is a practicing Solicitor-Advocate (Higher Courts Civil Proceedings) of the Supreme Courts of England & Wales and of the Eastern Caribbean at the BVI, a non-practicing barrister & solicitor in British Columbia, and a licensed foreign legal consultant in the State of New York.


JONATHAN EDWARD WHEELER specialises in complex cross-border disputes. He has conducted court proceedings, arbitrations, and mediations on behalf of many international clients. His expertise includes general commercial disputes, international fraud and asset tracing, international trust litigation, and contentious insolvency. Mr. Wheeler has particular expertise acting in complex international frauds where he navigates the interplay between criminal and civil fraud proceedings.

Mr. Wheeler has worked on a number of high-profile cases. He acted in the U.S. 580.85€ million Grupo Torras action for a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family in defense of trust assets in the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Jersey and Switzerland; for a trader in a complex hedge fund dispute in Jersey and Anguilla; and for the liquidators of TPL Limited arising out of the collapse of the Versailles Group. Recently, he has been acting for a Jersey trust company, in a claim arising out of a massive fraud, against a number of defendants worldwide including in the Cayman Islands, America, Switzerland, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Mr. Wheeler was described as "approachable... aggressive when required and understands the commercial realities of the situation," and "inventive and perceptive," in Chambers UK 2009. Mr. Wheeler is a Higher Court Advocate.


Meet the speakers

KENNETH BARDEN has been a practicing attorney for over 30 years and has been an international consultant since the mid-1990s.  Currently, he is senior advisor on a USAID project in the Middle East providing technical assistance in anti-money laundering and financial integrity.  Prior to that, Mr. Barden was team leader on the Millennium Challenge Corporation Threshold Indonesia Control of Corruption Project based in Jakarta where he provided guidance to the PPATK (Indonesian equivalent of a financial intelligence unit) and the KPK, corruption prevention commission.  He served as the first coordinator of the Financial Intelligence Unit for the Republic of Palau.  He has worked on a number of international development and capacity building projects (primarily in the areas of AML, financial integrity and tax and customs administration) in over 35 countries throughout Asia, Oceania, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  He has been an active member of the IAAR, and was a member of the inaugural class of the CSAR exam in 2010.  In addition to his law degree, Mr. Barden has post-graduate diplomas in Islamic Banking and Insurance, as well as in International Humanitarian Law, International Environmental Law, and Disaster Management.  Prior to his international work, Mr. Barden served as legal counsel to a number of local governments, primarily in the areas of public finance, tax administration, and law enforcement.


LISA BURTON is Associate Director of Grant Thornotn UK's Forensic and Technology Services  and is Head of eDisclosure Operations. She has worked for 20 years for legal IT suppliers, law firms, corporations and government agencies providing BPO consultancy services and products supporting large, complex projects. As owner and director of Legal Inc., she innovated and led the market through new technologies and solutions. Her specialties include workflow and process management especially in the e-disclosure arena, programme and project management, business change management as well as eCourt specialist. Lisa is PRINCE2 certified.


 

LINDA CANDLER is a former federal prosecutor and attorney in the Office of International Affairs of the US Department of Justice where she negotiated and drafted asset sharing agreements and extradition and mutual assistance treaties. Also a barrister in England, she has recovered proceeds of crime in many countries, including substantial assets linked to the infamous BCCI bank case in which she served as international coordinator on appointment by the US Department of Justice to the British Serious Fraud Office. Formerly a barrister at Furnival Chambers in London, she has represented the Crown Prosecution Service in asset confiscation cases. She is a member of the IAAR Advisory Board.


JAVIER CREMADES is the Chairman and founding partner of international law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, one of the most renowned law firms in Spain with offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Zaragoza, Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Lisbon with a roster of more than 100 lawyers. In May 2010, Cremades founded and chaired the "Global Alliance of Law Firms", a multi-national asset recovery effort on behalf of the international victims of US fraudster Bernard Madoff. His alliance of 50 law firms and dozens of asset recovery professionals secured $15.5 billion in settlements from banks that encouraged their customers to invest with Madoff without conducting due diligence. The recovery represented the largest of its kind to that point and remains the single largest recovery for non-US victims of Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Regarded as a forward thinker in the area of law technology, Cremades is a member of the Advisory Board for Electronic Management of the Public Administrations Ministry in Spain and chairs a group of international telecommunication companies.


STERL GREENHALGH is a partner in Grant Thornton UK's Forensic and Investigation practice, specialising in managing investigations for corporate and public sector clients and uses this experience to deliver practical fraud risk management solutions to help prevent fraud occurring. He also heads up Grant Thornton's Anti-Corruption Group. Previously he began his investigations career with HM Customs & Excise before joining a boutique investigations firm where he managed a wide variety of cases around the world, including seven years heading up a subsidiary office in the United States. He joined a Big Four Forensic Practice in 1998. With over 25 years' experience in forensic investigations and reviews, Sterl has extensive experience in corruption investigations (including Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) and remediation, helping clients devise and implement Bribery and Corruption strategies, managing large-scale global cross-border investigations, working on insolvency cases to recover assets and investigating employee fraud (including whistleblowing cases) in the UK.


STEPHEN HANCOCK has worked in the field of financial crime prevention since the introduction of the UK money laundering legislation in April 1994. He is the Professional Services Director and co-founder of AML Analytics Limited, where he leads the regulatory and financial crime professional services business, which supports financial institutions as they review, enhance and developed their legal and regulatory processes. Prior to establishing AML Analytics, Steve was the Director of Regulatory and Financial Crime Programmes at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, based in London. Previously, he was the Global Head of Money Laundering Prevention and Counter Terrorist Financing for Prudential plc for fifteen years. In this role he had operational oversight of the Prudential businesses throughout Europe, Asia and the USA. In addition, he had responsibility for Group policy and procedures in the prevention of money laundering crime, counter terrorist financing and economic sanctions.  A recognised leading expert in financial crime prevention, he has addressed international conferences in Europe, Africa, Asia, the United States and Australia. In 2007 Steve received the Annual MLRO’s.com/Complinet Anti-Money Laundering Achievement Award. In 2008 he was awarded the Best MLRO Award (Outstanding Leadership/Dedication) at the Compliance Register OStCar (Outstanding Service to Compliance and Regulation) Award ceremony.


KEVIN HELLARD is a partner in Grant Thornton's Fraud Insolvency Division which is dedicated to the investigation of fraud, misfeasance or professional negligence. A veteran expert of multi-jurisdictional asset location and recovery efforts, Kevin joined RSM Robson Rhodes in 1991, becoming part of Grant Thornton when the firms merged in July 2007. Kevin has 17 years of experience in insolvency and has for the last eight years run a national team specialising in fraud, investigation and asset recovery. He is routinely involved in complex litigation as a liquidator or other office holder to recover funds misappropriated by directors, advisors or fraudulent individuals. His expertise also extends to the recovery of assets both locally and abroad. Kevin is legally trained as well as being a licensed insolvency practitioner.


DIETER HOFMANN is a partner in the Litigation & Arbitration Team of Walder Wyss Ltd. His primary focus is dispute resolution in complex, mainly international cases, ranging from pre-litigation advice, representation of clients in court and in arbitration proceedings, coordination in cases involving multiple jurisdictions, enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitral awards and international legal assistance. He also sits as arbitrator in international arbitrations. He has considerable experience in complex disputes arising from directors' liability, shareholders' agreements, international contracts, engineering and construction projects, banking, finance and insurance, insolvency, etc.


CHARLES A. INTRIAGOis the founder and president of AssetRecoveryWatch.com and the International Association for Asset Recovery (IAAR). He launched Money Laundering Alert in 1989, MoneyLaundering.com in 1996, and the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) in 2001, the world's leading credentialing organization for persons with money laundering control responsibilities. His international money laundering conferences in South Florida drew some 1,500 attendees, including large numbers of law enforcement and regulatory officials and bankers. Previously, he served as chief counsel to an investigative subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives which oversaw the Department of Justiceˆ, Treasury Department, FBI, DEA, IRS, Postal Service and others involved in law enforcement, prosecution and the recovery of criminal assets. He was an Assistant US Attorneyˆ in Miami prosecuting white-collar criminals, drug traffickers, corrupt public officials and fraudsters, and Special Counsel on Organized Crime of Florida, where he wrote the statewide grand jury law.


FIONA JACKSON practises in proceeds of crime, asset recovery and fraud work for the prosecution, defence and third parties. She has represented a wide range of prominent defence and prosecution clients, including prosecuting authorities, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Assets Recovery Agency, the former National Crime Squad, and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), as well as a variety of police forces, foreign governments and receivers, in proceeds of crime matters before the House of Lords, Court of Appeal, High Court, Crown Court and Magistrates’ Court. Her experience ranges from hearings involving restraint, receivership, confiscation, cash seizure and asset forfeiture, to major fraud, money laundering and economic crime trials. Fiona has been instructed as counsel for the prosecution and defence in cases spanning the entire criminal spectrum from murder and violent crime, to dishonesty, burglary and firearms offences, along with medicines, drugs and mental health cases.


WILLIAM JENNINGS is a managing director in Navigant Consulting Inc.'s National Disputes and Investigations Practice in Atlanta, USA. A certified public accountant, he has more than 20 years experience in forensic accounting, business controls development, auditing, asset tracing and asset recovery. Mr. Jennings is a member of the inaugural class of Certified Specialists in Asset Recovery (CSAR) and is also a Certified Fraud Examiner. He has worked on hundreds of forensic accounting assignments in his career and has dealt directly in numerous high-dollar fraud cases. His case work has included securities fraud, embezzlement, commodities fraud, theft of trade secrets, bank fraud, money laundering and public corruption matters. He has written extensively on forensic accounting in fraud and asset recovery and is a frequent public speaker.


KENNETH KRYS is a financial investigator and analyst in the Cayman Islands with 20 years of experience in cross-border asset recovery cases throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, he has acted as court fiduciary or directed court-supervised engagements for over 50 business entities. His cases have involved BCCI, where he tracked down money misappropriated to Britain, Switzerland and Pakistan; investigating claims by the US Madoff Trustee for preference and statutory payments; participating as an expert in New York litigation to recover billions of dollars lost in the Refco fraud; assisting the SEC receiver of an insurance company that issued fraudulent policies to Latin American clients; and investigating numerous Cayman financial institutions, from banks to hedge funds, whose assets—both legal and not—were diverted overseas. Credentialed as a chartered accountant, chartered financial analysis, certified fraud examiner and certified anti-money laundering specialist, he is a former chief of compliance for Cayman’s Monetary Authority and sits on a number of regulatory boards there.


ARNOLDO LACAYO (CSAR) is an attorney with Astigarraga Davis, he focuses his international commercial litigation practice on financial fraud and asset recovery. He has experience litigating complex business and commercial disputes in both state and federal courts and has represented multi-national corporations and sovereign governments in matters pending in U.S. Courts. His recent speaking engagements include the Forty-Eighth Annual AIJA Congress, Fraud and Insolvency in the Financial Crisis (Charleston, South Carolina, August 2010); 2010 Offshore Alert Financial Due Diligence Conference, Pursuing Unique Assets (Miami Beach, Florida, May 2010); and The Inter-American Bar Association’s Forty-Fifth Annual Conference, Financial Fraud and the Ponzi Explosion – Taking Action When the House of Cards Collapses (Nassau, Bahamas, July 2009). He has also contributed to or co-authored various papers and chapters, including the United States Chapter in The FraudNet World Compendium on Asset Tracing and Recovery.His memberships include the American Bar Association and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.


TREVOR MILLINGTON OBE is a barrister and senior lawyer in the Asset Forfeiture Division of the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office. He was responsible for setting up the Customs and Excise Asset Forfeiture Unit in 1989. Since that time he has specialised exclusively in the law relating to the restraint and confiscation of the proceeds of crime and has been involved in many of the leading cases on the subject. In 1994 he was seconded to Gibraltar where he was responsible for drafting legislation to implement the EC Money Laundering Directive in that jurisdiction. He lectures widely on the subject and is co-author, with Mark Sutherland Williams, of one of the leading textbooks, “The Proceeds of Crime: Law and Practice of Restraint, Confiscation, Condemnation and Forfeiture”, published by Oxford University Press in 2007. He is on the editorial board of “The Proceeds of Crime Review” published twice yearly by Wildys and is a member of the Society of Authors.


CHARLIE MONTEITH, until February 2011, was the Head of Legal Assurance at the UK Serious Fraud Office where he was a leading policy maker and a  key architect of the UK’s new Bribery Act due to come into force in 2011. He was on the Law Commission’s Bill Advisory Group, led the drafting of the Attorney General’s guidelines and was part of the working group that drew up the adequate procedures guidance, and he led the Director of the SFO through the parliamentary hearings. He led the drafting of the SFO guidance on POCA and Civil Recovery and helped implement the first SFO use of it in 2008. He has also provided operational and legal support in recovering assets from two former Presidents. He wrote and presented the UK approach to asset recovery and proceeds of crime for the OECD Anti Bribery working group typography on asset recovery.  He is currently a Peer reviewer for the StAR/OECD Working Group study on quantification of proceeds of bribery. Charlie has also been one of the UK's leading economic crime enforcers in recent years having been involved in such high profile cases as BAe, Mabey Johnson, Balfour Beatty and Oil for Food. He joined White & Case in February 2011 as Counsel in the global White Collar group based in the London office.


CHRISTOPHER OSBORNE, a Director in Alvarez & Marsal’s Dispute Analysis & Forensic Services practice in Europe with more than twelve years of experience has investigated and advised on many civil and criminal fraud cases.  Mr. Osborne was seconded to the Financial Services Authority (“FSA”) (the UK financial regulator) in 2007/08 where he conducted forensic work on insider dealing investigations including the first criminal prosecution of insider dealing by the FSA (TTP/McQuoid) and an insider dealing ring.  He has assisted the wind down process of derivatives, SPVs and other assets for Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.  Mr Osborne led the European/Africa/Middle East investigation and verification of plaintiff claims emanating from a terrorist act. He has worked on behalf of the UK government’s Serious Fraud Office, where he advised on a high-profile case involving alleged price fixing and cartel arrangements between generic drug manufacturers/suppliers .  Mr. Osborne also provided forensic accounting advice, including detailed analysis of pricing mechanisms for the generic drug industry.   Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Osborne was a senior manager with PKF (UK) LLP and previously worked with Lee & Allen Consulting Limited, now part of CRA International.


 

SION RICHARDS' practice concentrates on the areas of finance litigation, fraud litigation, and contentious insolvency and restructuring. He has substantial experience advising major banking institutions, asset-based lenders, investment funds, and leading insolvency practitioners. His caseload has ranged from multinational fraud claims in multiple jurisdictions, acting primarily for defrauded financial institutions and officeholders of the relevant companies, to advising on litigation tactics and other issues arising in the context of restructurings, insolvencies, and distressed facilities, including various structured products. Sion's recent experience includes advising: the board of Langbar International Limited, an AIM-listed company believed to have assets in excess of 435.63€ million, on matters arising out of the fraud that has been perpetrated; the administrators of Weavering Capital (UK) Limited, the failed hedge fund manager, on various insolvency and litigation issues; the Antiguan liquidators of Stanford International Bank Limited; a security trustee and collateral manager, in the context of a back-to-back total return swap transaction in which tainted funds were received that emanated from the fraud perpetrated by Marc Dreier; Standard Bank Plc in the Commercial Court and Court of Appeal in proceedings arising out of a cotton trade finance facility; and XL Leisure Group, the U.K.'s third largest tour operator, on the appointment of administrators. Sion lectures extensively on fraud and contentious insolvency and restructuring issues.


KEVIN ROBERTS is a partner at Morrison Foerster in London specializing in regulator compliance, corporate investigations and fraud. He advises corporations and individuals in money laundering compliance and investigations, regulatory compliance, tax investigations, fraud, including th investigations and enforcement actions by the UK's Financial Services Authority. As part of his international practice, he also advises on mutual assistance requests and extradition. Mr. Roberts is a frequent speaker on asset recovery, confiscation and money laundering. He is a contributing author to the leading text, Smith, Owen and Bodnar on Asset Recovery (Oxford University Press). Mr. Roberts is Higher Court Advocate as well as Corporate Counsel Liaison Officer for the IBA's Business Crime Committee and Treasurer of the European Criminal Bar Association. He was noted in the UK Legal 500 for representing a pharmaceutical executive in the largest price-fixing case ever brought against British companies by the government's Serious Fraud Office.


FELICITY TOUBE QC is an English barrister at 3-4 South Square, she specializes in the civil aspects of commercial fraud, corporate and personal insolvency, company law, banking and commercial litigation. She advises and appears as a trial lawyer in cross border fraud cases, including those involving Madoff, Stanford, Barlow Clowes, Versailles and Palmer. In the international field, she has specialist knowledge of cross-border bankruptcyˆ, particularly the EC regulation and UNCITRAL. She frequently handles cases involving the laws of other jurisdictions including the United States, Jersey, Isle of Man, Mauritius, Iceland, Cayman Islands, Spain, France, Equatorial Guinea and Switzerland. She recently edited and contributed to the book, "International Asset Tracing in Insolvency," published by Oxford University Press, which dissects the asset tracing tools that are available in a number of jurisdictions, including England and the US.


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