Roderick CORDARA KC

Roderick Cordara is a law graduate of Cambridge University (Trinity Hall, first class degree). He is a Leading Counsel (‘Silk’) in the UK and Australia. He is admitted to practice in the Courts of the UK, Australia, Singapore (SICC), and the European Court of Justice. Roderick is also a member of the Bar of St Vincent & the Grenadines.

He is unique at the Bar in being a Leader in both commercial and tax fields, which combine both private and public law issues. He has an international practice, both in commercial and investor state arbitration, as well as appearing before supra-national judicial bodies in treaty related issues (usually tax). As a leading tax practitioner, he has amassed extensive public law experience (both domestic and international) in litigation and arbitration on tax issues involving governments and parastatal entities.

His arbitration practice focusses in particular on disputes – both private law and treaty based – relating to the oil & gas, power generation, and renewables, sectors, principally in Asia, UK Offshore, and East and West Africa. In this context, he has acted in energy-related disputes (eg production sharing, or insurance-related) in relation to fields in Central Asia, India, Africa, the Far East, and UK Offshore.

He has also great experience in shipping and ship construction disputes, involving shipyards from Asia to Europe, and vessels from super luxury yachts and warships, to bulk carriers.

He has also been involved for many years in construction related work over the years, mainly regarding overseas projects, including North Europe, E Asia and Africa (latter energy related). He also does engineering construction work. These cases have included professional negligence as well as constructor-client disputes.

He has also long experience handled tax and general issues arising in the UK media sector, in particular visual arts and the movie industry.

He has also acted for many years in connection with disputes involving the sale of goods, in particular in connection with aviation and the arms trade (the latter for Government clients). He has wide experience in disputes concerning the supply of services, including services in relation to goods sold, as well as M&A disputes.

He has been standing Counsel to UK Government in export insurance matters, and has acted both for and against the UK, in litigation involving international treaty obligations.

His tax practice relates principally to transactional taxes and duties (VAT/GST, customs duties, excises, etc.) mostly in the context of the treaty work (including EU treaties, as well as bilaterals). His domestic tax law scope extends outside Europe (principally Australia (where he is also qualified) and to South East Asia – Singapore, Malaysia). His practice has followed the global spread of goods & services taxes, with their associated domestic and cross-border issues. This practice has expanded to include gambling taxes (especially in cross-border contexts), insurance-related taxes (IPT), and environmental taxes.

Although acting principally for taxpayers, he has advised and represented both the UK and Australian Governments in fiscal matters. He has appeared frequently in leading tax cases in the UK, EU, and Australian Courts, up to the highest levels. He is very widely experienced in tax litigation involving international treaty interpretation and application, including issues of unfair taxpayer treatment, abuse, and market distortion. He has dealt with tax issues from every conceivable industry from energy, mining, banking, hospitality, ship sale, newspapers, to health care, education, retail, car manufacture, on line gaming, etc..

He has specialised for many years in restitutionary claims, both in commercial and tax contexts.

He has written concerning the interface between domestic taxation and investor-state treaty protections.

His particular focus is on cases involving technical factual questions and where cross-examination may be critical. He acts as arbitrator. He has also been instructed to give expert evidence of UK & Australian law. He is heavily involved in creating arbitral institutions in the Horn of Africa (the IGAD and Somali projects respectively).