Francisco J. Cortina Velarde (Barcelona)

Francisco relocated in Barcelona on January 1, 2020, and is in charge of the Mexican Desk of the law firm, focused on Mexican clients doing business in Europe and on Spanish companies with business interests in Mexico.

Throughout his professional career, he has been partner at KPMG Cárdenas Dosal and at Chevez, Ruiz, Zamarripa & Co, both based in Mexico City. He is a member of the Mexican Bar of Lawyers, where he was a founding member of the Foreign Trade Commission which he chaired in the 2001-2005 period. He was a member of the Board of Directors between 2005 and 2009.

In addition to this, he chaired the Foreign Trade Commission of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Mexican Chapter. He is the current vice president of the Global Legal Customs Group (GLCA), which groups together the main lawyers in this field at international level. He is also a Full Member of the International Customs Law Academy.

Over the last fifteen years he has repeatedly appeared as outstanding lawyer in specialized publications such as Legal 500, Chambers, Who’s Who Legal and Latin lawyer.

He has given lectures at different seminars in Mexico, USA, Europe and Asia. He has recently acted as moderator at the World Trade Organization Public Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.

He was professor of Foreign Trade at the Universidad Iberoamericana Master’s degree in Corporate Law in Mexico City and at the Foreign Trade Degree Course at the ICC – ELD.

He has published papers and articles in specialized journals and newspapers, both in Mexico and abroad.

Themis has recently published the sixth edition of Ley Aduanera, Análisis y Comentarios, a book written by Mr. Cortina (first edition in 1988). He is also co-author of the Mexico section of Transfer Pricing and Customs Valuation, published by IBDF (the Netherlands).

On the cultural side, Francisco has written a number of thrillers which have been published both in Mexico and Spain: La Chica IBM, (2009), Puerta Santa Fe, (2014) Distrito Federal Historias de un Secuestro (2015) 11:53 (2018)