Tiruchelvam Associates

PROFILES

Sithie Tiruchelvam

LLB(Ceylon); Attorney at Law (1968)

Founding Partner

Sithie Tiruchelvam is the Founding Partner of Tiruchelvam Associates.

Her areas of specialty include: Corporate and Commercial Law, Consumer Law, Contract Law, Employment/ Labor Law, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Human Rights, NGO and INGO Law, Litigation, Immigration Law and Tax Law. She is also a notable Human Rights Campaigner.

She has advised on the financial and legal review and restructure of a regional academic and research centre which saved the institution from a debt crisis of over seventy eight million rupees. She regularly advises multi nationals on various commercial legal matters. She has advised on stock option offers, reviewing local legislation and providing tax advice for the 4th largest pharmaceutical company worldwide. Her expertise in providing holistic advice on legal issues for corporate clients outside of Sri Lanka has earned her particular praise.

She currently serves on several Boards, including John Keells Holdings, Central Corporate and Consultancy Services (Pvt) Ltd, Nadesan Centre for Human Rights, LIRNEasia, and South Asians for Human Rights.

She is also the chairperson of the Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust and the Foundations for Peace Network, a worldwide network of community foundations working on issues of peace and reconciliation in fractured societies.

Asanka Abeysekera

Attorney at Law (1977); Notary Public;

Partner / Company Secretary

Asanka Abeysekera has over 31 years of experience in the legal profession and has served as Vice President (Legal) in Vanik Incorporation Ltd, Assistant Manager (Legal) in the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (presently known as the Board of Investment) and as Legal Manager at Finco Limited.

She joined the firm in 1990 as an Associate and left it to join Vanik Incorporated Ltd in 1999 in order to widen her knowledge base. She re-joined the firm in 2003 as a Partner and is in charge of the Company Secretarial Division of the firm. Her experience includes directing, supervising and advising a large merchant banking group on all its legal issues. She has been providing legal advice to banks on secured transactions and represented the borrower when a Sri Lankan based hotelier entered into loan agreements with a banking consortium. Her areas of expertise include: International Trade, Banking, Securitization, Foreign Investment Law, Corporate Secretarial Services, Conveyancing and Intellectual Property.

Ramani Muttettuwegama

LLB (Lon); LLM (Columbia); Attorney at Law (1993, Sri Lanka);

Barrister at Law, Lincoln’s Inn

Partner

Ramani Muttettuwegama joined the firm in 1993 and was made Partner in 1999. Her areas of expertise include: Company and Corporate Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, Project Finance, International Business Transactions, E-commerce, Human Rights, and Environmental law. She is presently on a leave of absence in Europe.

Senior Associates

Sharmela de Silva

LLB (Middx), LLM(Lon), Solicitor(UK)

Senior Associate

Sharmela de Silva was educated in the UK and qualified as a Solicitor of England & Wales in 1989. She gained extensive litigation experience during a period of training at a London (West End) solicitors firm.

From 1990 to 1992 she lived in Sri Lanka and was attached to Julius & Creasy, a long standing and prestigious law firm in Colombo. She specialized in Company Law. On her return to UK from 1992 to 1994 she worked as a solicitor at the Central London firm of Scott Marks & Company where she specialized in litigation.

Since 1995 she has been associated with Tiruchelvam Associates first in the capacity of an Associate, then a Legal Consultant and now as a Senior Associate.

Her main field of legal expertise is Company Commercial Law having obtained a Masters in this field from the University of London in 2000. Her special field of interest is the telecommunications sector in Sri Lanka and she has published a number of papers in this area. She was the lead lawyer in the team acting for a major Telecommunications giant in the largest telecom sector privatization in Sri Lanka. She assisted in the preliminary and final due diligence studies and participated in the negotiations of share purchase, the shareholders and management agreements. Additionally, she has counseled on the legal and regulatory issues on related transactions involving investments in wireless loop and cellular telecommunications systems.

Her other areas of expertise include the drafting and reviewing and commenting on various agreements in the following areas: Distribution and Agency , Commercial Leases, Joint Ventures, Partnerships, Project Management, Mortgage Bonds, Trusts and Corporate Guarantees.

Other specialist areas include Employment Law, Contracts and Consumer Law in which she regularly advises clients.

Consultants

Mr. C.P.E. Gunasingam

BSE (Madras); LLB (Colombo); Attorney at Law (1972)

Mr. Gunasingam is a Fellow Member of the Sri Lanka Institute of Taxation and has served as its President for four years. He has served as a Visiting Lecturer in Taxation at the Sri Lanka Institute of Taxation and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka. He has also served as an Assessor of Inland Revenue from 1962 to 1973 and counts 34 years of service as a Tax Practitioner. He has addressed seminars and contributed articles to newspapers and journals on tax related subjects.

Mr. Gunasingam served as a Board Member of Peoples Bank. Presently he serves as a Board Member of the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka, Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka and the National Council for Economic Development.

Dr. A. Rohan Perera P.C.

LLB (Ceylon); Diploma in International Law and Development (ISS); PhD (Colombo); Attorney at Law (1973)

Dr. Rohan Perera, a Public International Law expert is our external consultant in International Law. Having joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an Assistant Legal Advisor in 1976, he was appointed an Additional Legal Advisor and finally Legal Advisor, and has recently, upon reaching the age of retirement prescribed for public officials, relinquished his post at the Ministry.

During a career spanning a period of over thirty-two (32) years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he has been directly involved in the negotiation of State-to-State agreements such as the Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (concluded by Sri Lanka) as well as Free Trade Agreements between Sri Lanka and India and Pakistan. He has also represented the Government of Sri Lanka in international arbitrations on investment disputes before the Arbitral Tribunal of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). He has been involved in the negotiations of bi-lateral Air Services Agreements and bi-lateral treaties on Extradition, Mutual Legal Assistance and Maritime Boundary Regimes, for and on behalf of the Government of Sri Lanka.

He is the Chairman of the United Nations Ad-hoc Committee on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism and is currently serving as a member of the UN International Law Commission (ILC). He has been mandated by the ILC to co-author a discussion paper on the ‘MFN Clause’ in the context of recent bi-lateral investment and economic integration agreements.

Mr. Mithran Tiruchelvam

BA History (Reed College); BA Law (Cantab); LLM (UPenn); Attorney (2004, New York)

Mithran Tiruchelvam is a US qualified lawyer. He has served as an Associate in leading firms such as Shearman & Sterling and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in New York for five years.  He has also worked as in-house counsel for Tata Consulting Services, based in New York.

Mithran Tiruchelvam's experience has involved health care, private equity and mergers & acquisitions. He has a BA (Law)  from Cambridge University, where he was a Commonwealth scholar and an LLM from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He also has a BA in History from Reed College. Mithran Tiruchelvam was admitted to the New York Bar in 2004.

Instructing Attorney

K. M. Sujatha Kumari Kulatunga

Attorney at Law (1977); Notary Public; Company Secretary; Commissioner of Oaths

Sujatha Kulatuga joined the firm in 1995 as the firm’s Instructing Attorney. She has 28 years of litigation experience. She has also been a Human Resources Manager and a Legal Officer with various companies, government corporations and private companies. She is an affiliate member of the Institute of Personal Management and is a Consultant in Human Resources Management. Her areas of specialization include: Labour Tribunal trials, matrimonial cases and all other civil matters up to the Appellate Courts. She also acts as a Disciplinary Inquiry Officer for commercial and government institutions.

Legal Officers:

Diani Nanayakkara,

LLB (Colombo); Attorney at Law (2007); Commissioner for Oaths; Company Secretary

Nadia Ishaq

LLB (Lon); LLM (Columbia)