Head of legal and corporate affairs | Terpel Peru
Jorge Arias Valencia
Head of legal and corporate affairs | Terpel Peru
Team size: Five
What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?
In the past year, we defined and developed a robust compliance program to ensure compliance with anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist financing, and anti-competitive conducts, in order to properly manage the risks to which employees may be exposed while performing their responsibilities. Despite this, the regulation has added new crimes (for example, tax crimes, customs crimes, crimes against cultural heritage, among others) that need to be considered by companies within their compliance programs, which clearly represents a challenge given the several areas of specialisation that compliance officers need to have under control.
Looking forward, what technological advancements do you feel will impact the role of in-house legal teams in the future the most?
Without a doubt, I believe that robotisation of legal instruments (for example, contracts and letters) including the issuance of legal opinions, are going to be part of regular services that the market will offer to companies that will be replacing a lot of lawyers. Therefore, the value of the in-house legal team will be based on how strategic and critical thinking you are. We will be more valuable if we know more about the business.
What is a cause, business related or otherwise, that you care about, and why?
At Terpel, we care about education and environment. Regarding education, our employees volunteered as teachers in schools located in Callao – Lima over the past year, reinforcing the knowledge of kids in mathematics and literature. Also, regarding the environmental side, we are dedicated to planting trees in the areas in which we work. Such initiatives allow us to make a difference to the wider community and stay aligned within our core values which are integrity, respect and trust.
General counsel | Celepsa
Head of legal and corporate affairs | Terpel Peru