Raedas

Number of employees: 30

Languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, English, Farsi, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian.

Overview & History:

Established in 2016 by Andrew Wordsworth, Nicholas Bortman and Joana Rego, Raedas is the first, and remains the only, specialist investigations firm dedicated exclusively to contentious situations, namely litigation and arbitration support, enforcement of judgements and arbitral awards and other complex disputes. Following the rise of litigation and arbitration boutiques over the past decade, Raedas provides compliementary investigative expertise, delivering factual precision, a knowledge of legal process and rules of evidence, and creativity. Based in London, Raedas opened its first international office in Washington DC in 2022 followed by Dubai in 2024.

Raedas regularly acts for the world’s leading law firms in major litigation and arbitration, bringing in-depth knowledge and experience of investigative methodologies, legal discovery and disclosure processes and enforcement strategy; creating opportunities to obtain information often combining investigative methodology and legal process, public relations and lobbying to advance its clients’ cases and interests. Raedas’ clients, who range from legal boutiques, international law firms through to UHNWI and Fortune 500 companies, states and supranational entities, frequently require the firm to present expert and factual evidence in court and before tribunals. Raedas has significant experience in both Civil and Common Law procedure for obtaining and submitting evidence in support of legal proceedings, particularly towards disclosure and freezing applications worldwide.

Services:

Litigation & Arbitration Support:

Raedas assists legal counsel in complex global disputes, gathering documentary and testimonial evidence and information and contributing to legal strategy. The firm has in-depth experience in the collection of information for use in legal proceedings, recognising the high standard required of material submitted in court or before a tribunal. In addition to delivering evidence, Raedas also provides advice to help clients build successful strategies and intelligence to help guide their decisions.

Asset Tracing & Recovery:

Raedas works with legal counsel to enforce judgments and arbitral awards, identifying assets, unwinding asset protection structures, and delivering evidence in support of attachment and discovery applications.

Internal Investigations:

Corporate malfeasance presents unique financial and reputational risks to any business or brand. Raedas works with executives, legal counsel and advisors to develop an effective response, including civil or criminal prosecution, communications strategy or self-reporting. This includes our Raedas’ forensic accounting practice, which provides forensic and investigative support to collate transactions and analyses complex banking disclosures.

Contentious Situations:

Raedas assists clients in moments of crisis or extraordinary adversity, to counter hostile parties or competitors, mitigate black public relations campaigns and resist unjustified government pressure. Combining intelligence gathering with messaging and influence campaigns, the firm helps clients understand problems and enable an effective response.

Specialised Services:

Sovereign Disputes:

Raedas’ team works closely with legal counsel, prosecutors’ offices, and other legal representatives as part of broader teams in support of complex and high value arbitration under ICSID, ICC, LCIA rules and a range of other tribunals, as well as litigation across domestic courts. This practice supports both Sovereign States, State Owned Companies, Sovereign Wealth Funds and State agencies as well as investors and holders of claims and awards that are adverse to a sovereign body. Raedas regularly advises third party funders on the strengths of potential claims, and provide assessments of monetisation options and enforcement assists in securing settlements and are one of the most experienced and reputable firms advising on matters of this nature. The practice is led by Joana Rego and Isabel Asquith.

Sanctions:

Raedas assists legal counsel to examine the tangible command and control structures of entities formerly controlled by sanctioned parties. This includes on entities in contemplated litigation with Russian counterparties that they suspect are controlled by an individual subject to international sanctions. In the context of the UK’s sanctions framework, Raedas investigates how control is exercised in practice from within specific entities in Russia in order to confirm whether a designated individual could, if they chose to, exercise control over the counterparty.The practice is led by Andrew Wordsworth, Matthew Walker and Tobias Vollmer.

Crypto-asset Tracing and Recovery:

Raedas’ team are skilled in using advanced blockchain analytics tools (such as Chainalysys) to track and recover misappropriated crypto assets, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralised finance (DeFi) tokens, stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. Raedas has a successful track record in identifying fraudsters and reclaiming stolen crypto assets, working closely and diligently with legal teams to substantiate multijurisdictional disclosure applications and freezing , injunctions. and freezing orders. The team is led by Matthew Walker and Senior Associate Henry Edelstein.