Juan Israel Casallas

Juan Israel Casallas Romero is an attorney in Holland & Knight's Bogotá office and focuses his practice in public law, arbitration, constitutional and administrative litigation. He has extensive experience in litigation and arbitration involving commercial, constitutional and administrative law, and provides strategic counseling in those fields. Mr. Casallas Romero is well-versed with pre-merger reviews, antitrust proceedings, environmental liability, administrative proceedings and legal aspects regarding the management of community affairs and management of governmental affairs.

Mr. Casallas has wide experience in international and domestic commercial and investment arbitration disputes involving Colombian law issues under the rules of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), focusing on energy, construction and natural resources disputes involving sensitive international judicial matters of Colombian interest. These matters focus in energy and natural resources concerning disputes across the oil and gas, electricity, infrastructure, construction and mining sectors.

Mr. Casallas Romero has broad experience in contractual and torts and state liability, advising clients regarding legislative inquiries, contract law, competition and consumer law, as well as constitutional and administrative law matters, and works in disputes related with contractual liability and torts with respect to private and public entities, class actions, related to energy and natural resources, competition law, infrastructure, environment, consumer law, public services and constitutional proceedings.

Mr. Casallas was selected by the Law Society of England and Wales, the Bar Council of England and Wales and the Chamber of Legal Services of ANDI to participate in the 2018 Latin American Young Lawyers' Exchange Programme in London, UK.

In addition, Mr. Casallas Romero has served as a professor of postgraduate courses on environmental liability and prior consultation.

Mr. Casallas' recent engagements include:

• representing an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor against the owner in a $4 billion-plus ICC arbitration arising out of the construction of a mega infrastructure project in Colombia
• representing a mining company in several constitutional claims for the protection of fundamental rights before the Constitutional Court regarding disputes involving prior consultation controversies with ethnic communities
• acting as co-counsel regarding Colombian law issues of a mining company in an investment arbitration under the rules of ICSID
• representing a mining company in a multiparty commercial ICC arbitration, in which the combined value of the claims is in excess of $1 billion involving allegations of breach of contract in the construction of a major railway project in Colombia