40 Don Street
St Helier
Jersey
United Kingdom
JE1 4XD
[t] +44 1534 601 700
Member Contacts
Nuno Santos-Costa
Partner
[e] nuno@crillcanavan.com
[t] +44 1534 601 731
Kathryn Purkis
Partner
[e] kmp@crillcanavan.com
[t] +44 1534 601 731
About Crill Canavan
Crill Canavan was established in 1992 and now has six partners and over 60 employees. It is a medium-sized, locally focussed firm typified by an accessible, friendly and informal approach, but with an enviable expertise and reputation in each of its core areas of practice. It has one of the largest litigation departments in Jersey and is ranked in the top tier in the various legal directories for dispute resolution. This rating is based partly on the reputation in the market of its partner advocates, and partly on the strength in depth of the team as a whole, which includes a number of English barristers. In consequence the firm is usually involved in the high-profile pieces of litigation on the island. Because of the prominence of the finance industry in the commercial life of Jersey, these pieces of litigation often concern commercial fraud and trusts disputes.
Nuno Santos-Costa is the senior Litigation Partner in Crill Canavan. He has years of commercial litigation experience, with a particular focus on asset tracing, financial fraud and breach of trust litigation. He is also a Crown Advocate, meaning he takes cases on behalf of the Attorney General. His recent relevant cases include the Paolo Maluf/Republic of Brazil case, in which Nuno acted for Brazil in a case involving a massive fraud by a prominent Brazilian politician on certain state entities, and Pell Frischmann v Bow Valley, in which he acted for the successful defendants in a claim brought in fraud concerning an oil contract. He was also centrally involved in the landmark litigation surrounding the Esteem Settlement, which dealt with the recoverability of the profits earned in a fraud on creditors.
Kathryn Purkis became a partner in the firm in 2008, after being admitted as a Jersey Advocate. Prior to that she practised for some 14 years at the Chancery Bar from Serle Court chambers, where she specialised in (amongst other things) civil fraud and asset tracing. She was junior counsel on the massive Banco Noroeste fraud case (reported as Mattos v Macdaniels) from 2002 until her departure for Jersey in 2005. Before she qualified as an advocate in her own right, she assisted at Crill Canavan by (inter alia) acting as counsel on the Brazil case and on UCC v Bender, another significant Jersey fraud case.
Nuno and Kathryn are currently acting together for the First Defendant in the Alhamrani litigation, which, though it is presented as a trusts case, is of interest in the area of fraud in that all Defendants are, in effect, alleging that the entire claim is a fraud by the Plaintiffs. This is Jersey's biggest-ever trial.