Charter Party Workshop in Spanish

Former President of the Colombian Maritime Law Association, titulary member of the International Maritime Committee (CMI) and member of the IWG on Lex Marítima. He is also a member of the Customs and Trade Facilitation Commission at ICC Colombia and serves on the Maritime Hull & Liabilities Committee, the Legal Observatory and the Claims Observatory of the Latin American Association of Marine Underwriters (ALSUM). 

He was part of the expert working group that drafted the first version of Colombia’s Maritime Code proposal for the Colombian Maritime Authority (DIMAR). He holds an LL.M. in International Commercial and Maritime Law from Swansea University, UK (Distinction, 2009) and was recently granted a doctorate (honoris causa) by the Centro Universitario de Estudios Jurídicos. His most notable academic contributions include the book “Legal Aspects of Logistics and Logistics Services Contracts” (2014) and his coordination of “Perspectives on Maritime Law and Logistics” (2023). 

He is an Arbitrator at the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, a Research Professor in Commercial Law at Universidad Externado de Colombia, and the Director of the Logistics Observatory at the same university. Additionally, he is a Partner at Franco & Abogados Asociados. He also serves as the Director of the International Working Group on Trade Facilitation and Sustainability at the Center for Ocean Policy and Economics (USA) and is a BIMCO-certified trainer.

Attorney, graduated from the Universidad de Concepción (Chile). Holds a Master's degree in Maritime and Transport Law from Aix-Marseille University (France). In 2022, he obtained a university certificate in arbitration with highest honors from Université Paris-Saclay (France).
He is the author of several specialized publications on maritime law, insurance law, and environmental law in various national and international legal journals. Currently, he serves as a professor for the arbitration law module in the Master's in Private Law at the Universidad de Concepción.
Partner at Fernández & Leiva Abogados, a law firm based in Santiago, Chile. His practice focuses on insurance law, maritime law, and high-complexity litigation and arbitration.
Fluent in Spanish, French, and English.

María Belén Espiñeira is the Founding and Managing Partner of Espiñeira Maritime Lawyers, a boutique maritime law firm with offices in Argentina and Spain. She has over twenty years of experience in international maritime law, specialising in the representation of shipowners, charterers, and their underwriters, including IG P&I Clubs, in matters spanning charterparty disputes, cargo claims, vessel arrest, maritime incidents, marine insurance, and environmental liability. She began her career as in-house counsel at one of Argentina's leading shipping companies, before joining a specialist maritime law firm, and subsequently founding her own practice in 2011. She holds an LLM in International Maritime Law with Distinction from the University of Wales, Swansea. She currently lecturers at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and has previously taught maritime law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Escuela de Náutica Manuel Belgrano. She also served as Director of the Specialisation Programme in Marine Environmental Protection Management at the Instituto Universitario de Seguridad Marítima of the Prefectura Naval Argentina. Her publications cover different current topics on shipping and admiralty law as well as marine insurance. She has spoken at international conferences organised by the IBA, IMO, WMU, IIDM and WISTA International. She is the Founding President of WISTA Argentina (2012), a current member of that association, member of the Argentine Association of Maritime Law, takes part of the CMI International Working Group on Wrongful Arrest, and was recognised as Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year 2014 by LexisNexis and the International Bar Association at its Annual Conference in Tokyo.

Maria Laura Salazar is BIMCO’s Assistant Customer Success Manager for the Americas. She is a maritime legal professional with over a decade of experience in the industry. She has held diverse roles within the shipping industry and started her career path on Ship Management companies.
Passionate about industry development and foster collaborations, she has been actively involved in global maritime organizations. She is the first representative for the Americas on the Board of YoungShip International, an active member of WISTA USA and Venezuela, and is also actively engaged with the Technology Committee of WISTA International.