Wilbert Luna Arellanes
Biography
Overview
Wilbert Luna Arellanes focuses on anti-bribery and corruption, antitrust, data privacy, and financial services regulation.
He helps clients to efficiently observe complex regulation, enabling their business ventures in the increasingly challenging legal landscape.
Prior to joining the Firm, Wilbert worked at the Mexican Ministry of Finance, serving as national representative before international organizations like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as well as the Financial Action Task Force. He also participated in the draft of regulations like the Mexican Anti-Money Laundering Act, and provided legal advice to two former Presidents of Mexico.
This provided him with experience on highly specialized matters like Fintech, financial integrity, payments, and financial consumer protection. In this regard, he is an active member of the Firm's Financial Services Regulatory practice.
Wilbert has undertaken key pro bono work for the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, as well as the United Nations Environment Programme.
Wilbert has been listed as a "Rising Star" by Euromoney's Expert Guide for Antitrust and Competition in 2020, as well as a "Key Lawyer" in Antitrust and Competition by The Legal 500 Latin America 2021. In this regard, he acquired experience collaborating at both the Mexican Competition Commission and the Administrative Council for Economic Defense, the Brazilian antitrust authority, where he was seconded.
Outside of his work at White & Case, Wilbert volunteers as the general counsel of the University of Oxford Mexican Alumni Association.
Experience
Financial Services Regulatory
- Regular advisor on financial integrity compliance to one of the largest asset managers in the world.
- Current advisor on payments, cryptocurrencies, anti-money laundering, and data privacy, for one of the most important messaging platforms in the world.
- Advisor on the validity of different securities custody agreements, involving a number of jurisdictions, for the Mexican branch of a global systemically important bank.
- Advise to a development bank of the French Government on sovereign guarantees.
- Successfully defending an American fintech company from fines of US$2 million, due to alleged anti-money laundering breaches.
- Represented Mexico as a delegate to the Plenary of the Financial Action Task Force, the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism.**
- Represented Mexico as a delegate to the Working Party 10 of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development while drafting the Commentaries to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), an international instrument aimed to tackle cross-border tax evasion.**
- Analyzed how the Mexican branch of one of the largest Spanish insurers could invest its technical reserves in securities traded in both Luxembourg and Switzerland.**
Antitrust/Competition
- Helped client to obtain the antitrust authorization to sell a 168-MW wind farm in the north of Mexico (deal value: US$250 million).
- Advisor in a high-profile cartel investigation in the hydrocarbons sector in Mexico.
- Provided merger-control advice to a technology entity, quoted on the FTSE 250 Index, related to the purchase of an electronic-gaming company with operations in seven countries.**
- Advising one of the largest agricultural unions of Mexico, to initiate an investigation for abuse of dominant position in the seeds' distribution market.**
Regulatory & Compliance
- Advise on public procurement and anti-bribery and corruption to an oil and gas company, in connection with a Deferred-Prosecution Agreement executed with authorities from the United States of America.
- Advise on anti-corruption for a Japanese infrastructure developer, as well as for the Mexican branch of an American bank.
- Advised the Argentinian branch of one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world on which anti-bribery and corruption norms it had to comply with in order to operate in Mexico, with parties from both the United States and the United Kingdom.**
- Being part of the successful defense team of a former President of Mexico on a US$50 million tort case before different US Federal Courts (including the Supreme Court of the United States).**
Data, Privacy & Cybersecurity
- Advise on Mexican data protection to one of the most important messaging platforms in the world.
- Advise on personal data sharing between the entities of a corporate group that comprises a retail company and a bank.
** Some of the above representations were handled by Luna Arellanes prior to his joining White & Case, S.C.
Panelist, "International advances and issues recognizing the correlation between corruption and financial crimes." Invited to speak at the 2nd Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Forum, organized by the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Sciences Po (Paris), June 2017.
Panelist, "Practicing International Law in Government." Invited to speak at Harvard Law School. Cambridge, MA, March 2016.
Panelist, "Specific KYC measures for financial inclusion." Invited by the World Bank and the Financial Action Task Force for Latin America to speak at the Workshop for Financial Inclusion and Anti-Money Laundering/Counter-Financing of Terrorism measures. Paraguay, November 2014.
Panelist, "Regulation of tiered banking accounts." Invited by the World Bank to speak at the Peer Learning Workshop on Development of Financial Inclusion Policy and Risk-Based Legal Regulators Frameworks. South Africa, July−August 2014.
Carlos Mainero and Wilbert Luna Arellanes, (November 5, 2020), "What to expect from the latest amendments to the FATF Recommendations," Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.
Carlos Mainero and Wilbert Luna Arellanes, "Mexico's Anti-Money Laundering Guide," Editions 2019 and 2020, Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.
Wilbert Luna Arellanes, "Information, education, and protection of financial services consumers: current trends in Mexico due to the 2014 financial reform," in NEW CONSUMER LAW IN MEXICO (Oscar Negrete ed., 2015). ISBN 9786070920578 (in Spanish).
Featured as a prominent alumnus of the University of Oxford.
"Key Lawyer" in Antitrust and Competition, The Legal 500 Latin America 2021.
"Rising Star," Euromoney’s Expert Guide for Antitrust and Competition 2020.
Thesis with honors ("The procedure of reference to the OECD in terms of the Code of Liberalization of Capital Movements"). Harvard Law School, 2016.
Chevening Scholarship. Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, 2016.
Fulbright Scholarship. US Department of State, 2015.
Outstanding Performance Award. Mexican Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, 2009.
