Maria Shorter
Associate
Maria is an associate in the Litigation Practice Group in London. Maria’s work involves advising on a variety of commercial disputes including debtor and guarantor actions for financial institutions such as banks and asset-based lenders. Maria’s other experience includes assisting on large-scale investigations of financial institutions, including those with an international aspect. Maria has extensive experience in all types of enforcement actions.
- Part of the team acting for a client against its former accountant in a multimillion-pound fraud, obtaining judgment and committal for contempt.
- Successfully enforcing a multimillion-pound High Court judgment, obtaining orders for a sale in respect of a defendant’s property portfolio.
- Acting for an asset-based lender on a large multimillion-pound debt collection, recovering all of the book debt for the client.
- Part of the team of a large construction arbitration matter relating to disputes concerning an airport in the Middle East.
- Part of the team acting for a client in a claim involving procurement fraud. The claim was successfully settled following applications for a Norwich Pharmacal Order and Freezing Injunction.
- Part of the team working on large-scale investigations for a number of international banks in relation to breaches of AML and compliance regulations. The investigations were usually conducted in the bank’s jurisdiction and have included a number of banks in the Middle East, Europe and the UK. This work involved extensive reviews of the banks documents, including transactional data in order to prepare reports and responses to RFI’s from the relevant authorities.
- Part of the team acting for an EU financial services regulator in investigations relating to a private bank. Our role involved assessing compliance with money laundering regulations, terrorist financing and breaches of international sanctions; reviewing key documents and transactional data; assessing the bank’s policies for compliance with EU money laundering regulations; reviewing KYC documents and customer due diligence processes; identifying issues, suspicious/criminal activity; and producing comprehensive reports on our findings in preparation for evidence in criminal proceedings.
Education
- BPP Law School, L.P.C., 2013
- CILEx Law School, CILEx Professional Diploma in Law
- CILEx Law School, Institute of Legal Executives
- BPP Law School, Diploma, 2010
Admissions
- England and Wales, 2013
- Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, 2010
- Graduate of the Institute of Legal Executives, 2008