Anita de Villiers

Anita is a Senior Associate in the Dispute Resolution team. She has extensive dispute resolution experience with a focus on complex fraud and contractual disputes, investigations and injunctions, as well as applications to the English High Court for evidence for use in overseas proceedings under The Hague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters. She has a particular interest in advising on novel cryptocurrency related disputes. 

Anita is currently the lead associate acting on behalf of a private client in the approx. £2 billion ‘super trial’ commenced by the Danish Tax Agency (Skatteforvaltningen) following the collapse of Solo Capital (per Mr Justice Foxton “one of the largest and most complex pieces of litigation to be heard in the Commercial Court”), which concerns allegations of international fraud and money-laundering. It is one of The Lawyer’s “Top 20 cases of 2021”.  She is also providing ongoing assistance to a bank in respect of a multi-hundred million-dollar trade finance fraud. 

She previously acted on behalf of former subsidiaries of Yukos Oil and senior management in multi-jurisdictional litigation arising out of the misappropriation of assets (“Top 20 cases of 2020”) and on behalf of Slater & Gordon in respect of its multi-million pound breach of warranty and fraudulent misrepresentation claim against Watchstone Group plc (formerly Quindell plc) arising from its highly-publicised acquisition of Quindell’s legal services division in 2015 (“Top 20 cases of 2019”).

In 2019, Anita was part of a small team to take home The Legal Week’s ‘Corporate/Commercial Litigation Team of the Year’ award in recognition for her work in defending Sports Information Services Limited (SIS) in a complex case involving an unusual application of the law of copyright and database rights, unlawful means conspiracy and breach of confidence to horseracing and, more generally, to the collection and distribution of data. An application for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court is currently pending. The final outcome of the case will have significant implications on the scope of the tort of unlawful means conspiracy in English law and more broadly, the legal protection afforded to commercially valuable information which is not subject to protection by traditional intellectual property rights.  

Before joining CMS, Anita was an Associate in the Litigation team at Clayton Utz in Perth and Sydney, Australia, where she worked on large scale commercial litigation and regulatory investigations across multiple Australian jurisdictions.