Biography
Paul Beckett
Senior Counsel & Advocate
MannBenham Advocates Limited
Paul is Senior Counsel in the firm, with over forty years’ experience as a lawyer, both within the international private banking and fiduciary services industries and in private practice. He qualified as an English Solicitor in 1981 and as an Isle of Man Advocate in 1990 and is a non-practising Solicitor in Ireland (1998) and in Northern Ireland (2006).
Currently the Chairman of the Isle of Man Financial Services Tribunal (the appeals body from decisions of the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority), he is a member of the Solicitor Judges Division, Law Society of England and Wales, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).
He graduated from Worcester College, Oxford University in 1978 with First Class honours in Jurisprudence, being awarded his Master of Arts in 1982. As a member of New College, Oxford University he was awarded a Master of Studies in International Human Rights Law in 2015.
His fields of expertise are broad, covering company, commercial and trust law; banking and fund management; pensions and retirement benefit schemes; fraud, bribery, white collar crime, anti-money laundering and financial services regulation; virtual currency and the blockchain; international human rights; and arbitration.
Paul is a prolific writer and has been widely published. The most recent of his books have been commissioned by leading academic publisher Routledge: “Tax Havens and International Human Rights” ( October 2017 in hardback, December 2019 in paperback),“Ownership, Financial Accountability and the Law: Transparency Strategies and Counter-Initiatives” (May 2019) and “Labour Rights and the Catholic Church” (due in Spring 2021). He is author of the Isle of Man chapters currently found in “European Cross-Border Estate Planning” (Sweet & Maxwell), “International Insurance Law and Regulation” (Sweet & Maxwell), “Digest of Commercial Laws of the World” (with Carly Stratton, Thomson Reuters USA), and “International Taxation of Low-Tax Transactions” (Juris, USA).
Paul is named in the Legal 500 as a ‘Recommended Lawyer‘ for corporate and commercial matters and is also recognised by IFLR1000 as a ‘Highly Regarded‘ Isle of Man Advocate.