About

With extensive commercial and corporate law experience in private practice in Venezuela and Colombia, an LLM in Banking and Financial Law from Boston University, and two years at the Inter- American Investment Corporation (IIC), Anabella Vegas learned the legal systems of various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. This experience would be invaluable for her move in-house in 2015 when she was appointed to general counsel of Oleoducto de los Llanos Orientales, which also manages Oleoducto Bicentenario de Colombia. In 2017, her role was expanded to lead not only the legal team of the company, but also the corporate social responsibility and real estate teams. One of the most important projects under her leadership has been the legal supervision of the new transportation service rendered by the company since 2017, which involved shareholders agreements, new transportation agreements, and the structuring and negotiation of term sheets and memorandums of understanding, to make this new service viable for the company. This transaction required strong negotiation among shareholders, whose interests were not aligned. It was a complex arbitration with one of the shareholders and a client initiating an arbitration against the company regarding the effects and consequences of the occurrence of acts of God, or force majeure, which prevented the company from complying with its obligations under the transportation agreement. This was the first time in Colombia that oil pipeline transportation agreements were discussed in court, and could define important case law that could impact other oil pipeline transportation agreements entered by other oil pipeline companies. Although this arbitration has been jointly worked on with external legal counsel, it has required a lot of time and effort from Vegas and her legal team. Vegas identified that when she started the legal team was viewed as those that executed whatever the finance or operational teams would demand. This made the legal team just a simple executer that would deliver whatever the other teams would require. Vegas has encouraged her team to change this way of rendering services to the other areas of the company, and somehow give greater value to the other teams. She says, ‘it is not enough to just give a legal opinion, companies must engage in its business, and in-house lawyers are required to give real and innovating solutions at all time’. On Vegas’ leadership a nominator said that she, ‘has proven to be innovative and always goes the extra mile to review other alternatives that may be more efficient even though they have never been implemented in the past. Likewise, Anabella is always open to listen to options that are presented by her external advisors, which is really valuable considering that she works in a field where public entities are involved. Finally, Anabella has proved to be a great leader motivating her internal team of lawyers which is comprised of highly qualified individuals who come from some of the most important law firms in Colombia’.