Family and private client

A national oil company

Instructed through international counsel, the firm advised on the Petroleum Law 2020, on model production-sharing agreements and on licensing rounds. The recurring and most difficult work was the federalism question: which authority, the Federal Government or a Federal Member State, controls a given offshore right, and how a licensing round is run when both claim a say. The firm treated the constitutional question as the commercial question, on the basis that a production-sharing agreement is only as secure as the authority that granted it.

An international foundation

The firm reviewed and drafted Somali-law Murabaha, Wakala and joint-venture agreements for a housing-finance programme, structured so as to satisfy Somali banking legislation and Islamic Shari’ah principles at the same time. It settled the common-terms agreement, confirmed the regulatory position against the framework the Central Bank of Somalia applies, and documented the Shari’ah compliance in a way that a court and a scholar would both accept, so that the facilities could be enforced without reopening the question of whether they were compliant.

A global payments network

The firm advised on the regulatory treatment of digital financial services as the network connected to Somalia, covering payment-systems regulation, anti-money-laundering compliance, electronic transactions and consumer protection. Because mobile money is central to how Somalis transact, the advice was grounded in how the Central Bank of Somalia actually applies its framework in practice, not only in how the rules are written, so that the network could integrate on a compliant footing.