About

The Middle East legal team at DNV GL Group is part of the broader Middle East and Asia Pacific group legal team with two lawyers, Isoken Imohe and Stefanie Szabo, based in Dubai and supporting a multifaceted business comprising maritime, oil and gas, energy, business assurance and digital solutions in diverse geographies. They provide the legal, compliance and risk management oversight to these businesses managing 33 legal entities, three joint ventures, numerous sponsors within the GCC and handling a litigation portfolio in excess of US$100m.

The team is considered a world leader in innovative legal technology such as AI, blockchain, and automation tools. It implanted DNV GL’s “Global Smart Bidding and Contracting” project with colleagues in DNV GL’s oil and gas business units to improve the efficiency of the contract handling within that division. The system prescribes a three-tier process for bids and contracts based on a subjective assessment of the inherent risk and reward in each contract or opportunity increasing efficiency in the bid submission process. Over the past year and a half, the team has restructured the corporate structure and business operations of DNV GL in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. Additionally, the team is responsible for planning and executing a number of complex intercompany settlements between a Jersey entity in its marine services division and the Jersey entities’ branches and subsidiaries in the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. The settlements involve equity repatriation, write offs and loan waivers raising multiple jurisdictional and tax issues from Jersey (UK), UAE and Norwegian perspectives.

The team has also been the lead in the region on the company’s sponsor fee renegotiation, and credit collection initiative using bespoke legal templates for both and will be applying this to the company’s business in Africa, Pakistan and Iran, and had to handle the impact of the “Taw’theen programme” and “localisation” policies of the Saudi Arabian and Emirate governments and other immigration issues. In particular, Imohe is presently handling a number of litigation cases, both criminal and civil cases which vary from smaller amounts up to US$100m. Imohe identifies that, ‘the bridge between the in-house lawyer, the business area that has provided the services in the dispute, and the external lawyer litigator is of vital importance both in terms of understanding the issue as well as the end result’. Imohe is skilled at translating complex legal matters into simple language that the rest of the business can use, and has a good sense of perspective about the wider needs of the company beyond the specific matter at hand. Szabo, who has recently joined the team, has vast experience in litigation from golden circle firms and as Imohe explains, ‘has given new impulse and direction to our team’. Both lawyers have deep regional knowledge about the Middle East and GCC in particular, both in terms of regulatory landscape, dispute systems and commercial matters. They play an important role in explaining complex matters to the local management and consistently deliver successful outcomes for DNV GL.