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CTFIC0001/2024 Thembela Fula v Baker Tilly JFC LLC & CTFIC0003/2024 Claire Holloway v Baker Tilly JFC LLC

Judges

George Arestis

Cyprus

George Arestis has been a judge of the Qatar International Court since 2015. He studied at the Law School of Athens University, graduating in 1968. He subsequently went to England and read Political Science at the University of Kent at Canterbury, graduating with a Master’s in Comparative Politics and Government.

After practising as a lawyer for ten years, he was appointed as a judge in 1982 and, in 2003, he attained the office of Judge of the Supreme Court of Cyprus. He has been Cyprus’ first judge at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, a position from which he served for a period of ten years. In 2013, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law by the University of Kent.

George has given lectures on European Union law, mainly at universities in Cyprus, Greece, the UK, Germany, Belgium and Bulgaria.

With an interest in poetry, he has published a collection of poems “To Taxidi mou” (“My Journey”) (2009).  
 

Fritz Brand

South Africa

Fritz Brand has been a judge of the Qatar International Court since 2019.

Immediately after receiving his LL.B in 1972, he was appointed as senior lecturer at the law faculty of the University of Stellenbosch, where he taught until the end of 1976. In 1977, he joined the Cape Bar where he practiced as an advocate until September 1992. During that period, he served on the Cape Bar Council for about ten years. In 1989, he received his letters patent as a senior counsel. In 1992, he was appointed as a judge of the High Court in Cape Town. After serving as an acting judge of appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein in 2000, he was appointed permanently to that court. In 2010, he was appointed as an acting judge to the Constitutional Court for two terms, retaining his permanent position on the Supreme Court of Appeal bench. Since his retirement from that Court in 2015, he has been appointed to the Appeal Court of Botswana and to the Supreme Court of Fiji - positions which he still holds.

Yongjian Zhang

China

Notwithstanding his retirement from the Bench in 2019, Judge Zhang remains one of the most senior, experienced, and respected Chinese judges. He specialises in civil and commercial disputes. Graduating from Renmin University of China (also known as the People’s University of China) with a PhD in Civil and Commercial law, he spent more than 40 years in the Chinese Judiciary before retiring as Senior Judge of First Ranking in the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China (“SPC”) in January 2020.


Judge Zhang held various judicial positions across civil and commercial areas of law being appointed as a judge to the SPC in 2000, and as Chief Judge of the First Civil Division in 2012 (judge in charge of civil cases in China). In 2014, he was appointed as Chief Judge of the Second Civil Division of the SPC, where he was responsible for domestic commercial cases. From 2015 to 2019, he was Chief Judge of the Fourth Civil Division of SPC, which deals with international commercial disputes and disputes relating to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
Between 2013 and 2020, he was a member of the Adjudication Committee of the SPC which is the senior decision-making body within the Chinese courts supervising and guiding judicial operations.


As an expert in international commercial dispute resolution, Judge Zhang helped establish the China International Commercial Court serving as a Judge and Director.


Judge Zhang was a leading judge in judicial reform in China having been appointed in 2017 as Deputy Chief Judge of the First Circuit Court, the establishment of which was one of the fundamental structural reforms to the Chinese courts over the past 20 years.


He represented the Chinese judiciary in promoting judicial exchanges with other leading judiciaries including on the visit of Chinese Judges led by the Chief Justice to London in 2016, and the visit of the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales to China in April 2017. He led judges from China in establishing the first Expert Working Group on Commercial Dispute Resolution between the Chinese Judiciary and the UK Judiciary, which held meetings at a senior level in 2017, 2018 and 2019.


Since his retirement in 2020, Judge Zhang has served as an arbitrator of leading arbitral institutions in China, including the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission, and the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration. He was appointed as a member of International Commercial Expert Committee of the SPC in 2020 and serves as a part-time professor of international commercial law in the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL).


In January 2023 he was appointed as an International Judge to the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). January 2023

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