About

José Barría is a Panamanian lawyer in charge of the legal department of the business unit of the French group, Suez, overseeing the jurisdictions of Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia and Ecuador. During his career, Barría has assumed different roles, first dedicated to the attention of private clients, then as part of legal teams of important public entities. ‘This multiplicity of roles has shaped me as lawyer, and has helped me to have a multimodal perspective of the lawyer profession that allows me to understand with greater clarity the complexities of the operation of an entity such as Suez whose clients within the region are in their vast majority public entities’, explains Barría. He first started working as part of the legal team for the Trade Defense Office of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of Panama. Later he was appointed as legal advisor of the Mission of Panama to the United Nations in New York, and after that served as an associate lawyer of a major law firm in Panama, advising national and foreign clients on commercial matters. In recent years, he has been developing his career within a number of projects, first as a member of the contract team of the Panama Canal Authority and more recently in charge of the legal department for Suez regional offices located in Panama. As legal manager of Suez, Barría focuses his activities on the development of large-scale projects related to water and waste treatment systems, and on accompanying projects to provide technical, administrative and financial systems to public operators of water and waste-related services. In 2017 he facilitated a contract signed with the Panamanian Ministry of Health for the design, construction and operation of Juan Diaz plant, the largest sewerage water plant in Panama for an amount of US$220m. ‘One of the most important changes that I have been able to introduce within the legal department is to convey that the legal department has a very important place within the operating scheme of the company’, says Barría. Over the duration of his tenure, the role of the legal department has been key in strengthening the presence of Suez in the region with the incorporation of new projects in Panama, El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador to Suez’s portfolio. With this substantial business volume growth in the last two years, he has learned to understand the legal environment of different jurisdictions within his legal scope, to identify potential risks, and to find ways to mitigate them by negotiating balanced contractual structures and then ‘working hand in hand to keep track of contractual compliance’. This has led him to consolidate their collaboration structure and understand the cultural and legal complexities of different business areas within Latin America.