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In Discussion: International Asset Tracing and Recovery Course

Posted on 6 September 2021

Mishcon de Reya LLP is working with Blackstone Chambers and The Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London to launch the University’s first ever International Asset Recovery Course.

The course is a five-day programme running in November 2021 that will help you build upon existing expertise in this area by focusing on the legal and practical aspects that are of critical importance to the practitioner.

It will be delivered by two of the leading professionals in the legal world, Gary Miller, a Partner at Mishcon de Reya and Chairman of the International Fraud Group and Tony Peto QC, Joint Head of Blackstone Chambers. Both Gary Miller and Tony Peto QC are recognised as leaders in their fields by both Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners, and together bring to the course around 75 years of experience in tracing, freezing and seizing evidence and assets all over the world. Other speakers include Philippa Rees, Professional Support Lawyer in Dispute Resolution at Mishcon and Blackstone’s Leona Powell, a leading junior specialising in civil fraud and asset recovery.

In this video, the course leaders discuss the background and what will be covered.

For further information, please find the registration details here.

Gary Miller

Don't get up in the morning unless you can offer the client a commercial solution, stay in bed and do what a hundred other lawyers do every day.

Tony Peto QC

We are starting off the case in the way that traditionally lawyers would think you ended it.  We make sure that we've actually secured the evidence and the assets at the very beginning and then we know there's a target.

Gary Miller

Freeze, Seize and Recover.

Tony Peto QC

ROI is everything. 

Gary Miller

It's the embodiment of what you and I do.  We actually recovered more than we lost, do you remember that case, that great case?

Tony Peto QC

I do, yes.

Gary Miller

A shipping case where there was bribery, corruption.

Tony Peto QC

Someone has deliberately doctored the email.  It's not really litigation as people know it.  This involves burning midnight oils, it involves working ridiculously hard at difficult times, it involves having to react to an emergency at any time of the day or night during an investigation and then having to wake up Judges or having to go and stampede to different sites.

Gary Miller

The milk case.

Tony Peto QC

Oh the milk case. Our adversaries used every which technique to try and do over our clients.

Gary Miller

We turned up and they actually concealed the laptop that we were looking for that had all of our data on it.

Tony Peto QC

They did.

Gary Miller

So you know things go wrong.

Tony Peto QC

What Gary's firm and our Chambers have managed to do recently is established jurisdiction in England on a case where one wouldn't have thought it was possible. There were no Defendants in England, there were no assets in England and there was no wrong doing in England. Where I think we are in the forefront is in the way in which we've been using our fraud investigations along with our international law expertise.

Gary Miller

What's not being done well is the understanding of the risk and what to do in relation to that risk.

Leona Powell

The reality of international fraud litigation is that it's often complicated and the facts develop very quickly.

Philippa Rees

You need to know what kind of issues to anticipate so these things don't take you by surprise.

Leona Powell

We've really worked together to draw on all of our different experiences in reality to build this case study which is effectively the ultimate fraud case.  The delivery would be based obviously in part about the proper academic law that sits behind it.

Philippa Rees

We'll develop the case study in real time as we go through the course looking at all the twists and turns that happen.

Leona Powell

The participants in the course will be invited to interact with us and they'll have the opportunity to raise questions or issues based on their own experiences in this field …

Philippa Rees

And to share their own curve ball.

Leona Powell

And to share their own curve balls.

Tony Peto QC

This is not a dry law lecture but this is how we do it in practice.

Gary Miller

We are absolute specialists at what we do and when we work together in that way we get results.  Tony and I and Leona and Philippa and the things we've done, they're super creative, super transformational. That's what you need, you've got to stay ahead of the bad guys.  We all know this area is an area of discretion and if you've got some creative idea that can help us do our job better bring it on.

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