About

In July 2014, Sandra Monroy Suarez began her role as legal and compliance director for the Northern Latin America and Andean clusters at CenturyLink Colombia after developing her career in the telecoms and energy industries. Since joining, she has identified regulatory risks and pending issues and established actions plans to solve them, prioritising the prevention of future damages or sanctions. Her team drafted a matrix of licenses and regulatory obligations by country, implemented an automated email system with reminders to internal departments to help keep track of report and contract deadlines, has reduced external legal fees, and implemented stricter anti-money laundering and financial terrorism regulation systems. The structure of the legal department has changed and become specialist on compliance matters and local regulations. In Monroy’s career there have been some major litigation victories, and successful projects that demonstrate her leadership, talent and her inclusion in this publication. An example is the litigation around the payment of capital and interest from investments in a major Colombian bank ordered by a prominent brokerage between 2006 and 2007. The transactions were fulfilled and the money issued to individuals which constituted an illegal placement and collection of resources. The bank was flagged up for internal corruption and fuelled lots of litigation. Her team worked with the board of directors and the president of the bank in crisis management to recover the trust of customers. These actions were taken to protect the company’s assets and mitigate the damages, highlighting that the brokerage had a series of unreported legal investigations into prohibited conduct. Monroy acted on behalf of the bank’s board of directors and pursued action against the brokerage, and then oversaw its liquidation. This crisis was an important career development for her. She said, ‘It prepares me to handle successfully the big challenges, crisis and complex negotiations that I have managed in my career as a legal director or manager in the different companies. And how to make a 360 grade evaluation of complex situations and provide ways to solve them’. Another leading project supervised by Monroy was the fulfilment of the national 4G fibre optic project. From this she learnt how to manage the legal and regulatory issues of the project and keeping the company unharmed. There were no fines or claims involved, whilst the renegotiation of key aspects such as terms of the contract with the government was successful. Following this Monroy and her team negotiated with the Colombian government, and local indigenous communities to establish the first submarine fibre optic cable connecting Colombia with the Pacific Ocean. From this project she developed community engagement skills and experience working with government contractors, and her team completed the project without any fines, or sanctions further demonstrating her skill.