Position: Director
Telephone: +44 (0) 7951 71 2478
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Martin Polaine is one of the directors, a practising barrister (as a member of Brooke Chambers) of approaching 35 years’ experience and an arbitrator. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and a Fellow of the Asian Institute of Alternative Dispute Resolution (FAIADR).
He has advised states, corporates and individuals in Africa, Asia and Europe on dispute resolution, public international law and international/transnational criminal law. He has extensive experience in both civil law and common law states and his practice includes international arbitration (both commercial and state-investor), international trade and sale of goods, anti-corruption, AML/financial regulatory, international human rights law and treaty drafting. He also has a complementary background as a former senior prosecutor.
As a barrister, Martin has had conduct of numerous complex and sensitive cases, with a particular focus on those with an international element. He is also regularly engaged as an ‘expert’ by a range of international organisations (including Commonwealth Secretariat, Council of Europe, the OECD,UN agencies and the World Bank)
He has extensive experience in advising at ministerial and senior official level and has been responsible for drafting both national laws and international instruments. His wide-ranging representational roles have included treaty negotiation and serving as the UK’s legal representative on the OECD Working Group on Bribery. With a passionate interest in sport, he has also worked with governing bodies and player associations on compliance, governance and anti-corruption issues and has also participated as a European Commission expert on initiatives to counter match-fixing.
Martin is an experienced trainer, facilitator and crisis preparedness professional. He is a hands-on designer and facilitator of Solve workshops and has, since the late 1990s, conducted well over 200 exercises worldwide on a wide range of topic areas.
He also teaches law (and writes courses) at postgraduate level for the College of Law (Sydney), where he lectures in ‘International Arbitration & ADR’, ‘International Trade & Investment’, ‘Banking & Finance’, ‘Capital Markets’ and ‘Intellectual Property’. As both a practitioner and teacher, he has a keen interest in the Asia-Pacific region and in ASEAN in particular.
His publications include co-authorship of ‘Corruption & Misuse of Public Office’ (1st edition, Oxford) and of ‘Counter-Terrorism Law and Practice: An International Handbook’ (Oxford), as well as numerous manuals and papers in his specialist fields.
* Practising as a sole practitioner, distinct from his work with Amicus.
He has published widely and spoken at numerous conferences and seminars. He is also the co-author of:
- Corruption & Misuse of Public Office (Oxford, 2006);
- Counter-Terrorism Law & Practice: An International Handbook (Oxford, 2009);
- Special Investigative Means and Human Rights (Council of Europe, 2013);
- Mutual Legal Assistance Manual for Asset Recovery (Council of Europe, 2013);
- Mutual Legal Assistance and Mutual Assistance (Sakkam Press, 2014);
- Extradition: General Principles in Corruption and Related Cases (Sakkam Press, 2015);
- Investigating & Prosecuting Economic Crime: A practitioners’ manual for prosecutors & investigators (Council of Europe, 2016).