Member Profile

Yves Klein is a founding partner of Monfrini Bitton Klein, a conflict-free litigation boutique based in Geneva, successor of the firm founded in 1978 by Enrico Monfrini. The firm focuses on asset recovery, business crime defense, anti-corruption investigations and offshore litigation.

He develops strategies for searching and recovering assets internationally, and coordinates cross-border proceedings. He represents his clients, be they states, liquidators of foreign insolvencies, corporations or individuals, before civil, criminal and bankruptcy courts, to recover the proceeds of crimes and to obtain damages from perpetrators and facilitators.

Together with his partner Enrico Monfrini, Yves Klein has conducted the groundbreaking corruption recovery proceedings in the Nigeria vs. Abacha case, where more than US$ 2 billion has been recovered in ten jurisdictions since 1999. For the past 20 years, he also has been retained as Swiss counsel in several other corruption recovery cases, notably Brazil v Dos Santos Netto, Haiti v Duvalier, Tunisia v Ben Ali and Guinea v Steinmetz.

He also represents liquidators of foreign insolvencies, especially banks and publicly traded companies, and has recovered tens of millions of dollars for their depositors, investors and creditors, prominently in the context of Ponzi schemes. Notable among these types of clients, he represents the bank insolvencies in Switzerland of Stanford International Bank Ltd (Antigua), Banco Santos SA (Brazil) and Banco Turco Romana SA (Romania).

Yves Klein also applies his asset recovery skills in the enforcement of foreign judgments and arbitration awards. He has obtained the recognition of such foreign decisions for amounts in excess of US$ 100 million and has successfully recovered the assets that defendants concealed in Switzerland or abroad.

He has been recognized by Who’s Who Legal as one of the world’s “most highly regarded individuals” in asset recovery since 2013 and is ranked by Chambers Europe.

As Chair of the International Bar Association’s Asset Recovery Subcommittee (Anti-Corruption Committee), Yves Klein has established relationships with the World Bank, the OECD’s Working Group on Bribery, and anti-corruption law enforcement officials to develop best practices for the coordination of the use of civil asset recovery proceedings with criminal proceedings.

He has published about tracing and recovery of assets, particularly in cases of corruption, since 1996 and regularly speaks at international conferences on these matters.