On December 6^th, the UNCITRAL Colloquium on Civil Asset Tracing and Recovery was held at the UNCITRAL Headquarters in Vienna. Tapping into her considerable expertise in the field, KNOETZL’s Bettina Knoetzl was assigned the task to moderate the first panel of this unique gathering of international experts in Asset Tracing & Recovery.  

Despite her longstanding background and notable successes on the private law side of asset recovery work, Bettina felt honored for the invitation to take a role in this important United Nations group.  Her dedication to asset recovery work had been rewarded by Who’s Who Legal in 2017, when that organization recognized  her as their “Lawyer of the Year” in the field. Bettina is also the exclusive Austrian member of the renowned “ICC FraudNet”, the premier global network specialized on work in the field of fraud and asset tracing and recovery. Together with panelists Samuel Baumgartner (Professor at the University of Zurich Law School), Angel Ballesteros Barros (Representative of the Union Internationale des Avocats), Evgeniy Akimov (Managing Director of Sberbank, Head of Bankruptcy and Enforcement Division) and Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell (Associate Professor at University of Madrid), Bettina’s panel set the stage for the subsequent discussion to flag challenging legal issues in international asset tracing and recovery.

The presentations by the panelist generated a lively discussion and touchstone for three subsequent panels of experts. KNOETZL is very grateful for UNICTRAL’S initiative and fully supports further steps to foster international asset recovery work.