Rutsel Martha

Rutsel Silvestre Jacinto Martha, a Dutch national, is the former General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs of INTERPOL and of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Education

Martha studied law at Leiden University where he concentrated on public international law and organizations. Thereafter, he obtained the degree of Master of Laws in International Legal Studies at the Washington College of Law of the American University where he concentrated on international banking and finance. He obtained the degree of Doctor of Laws (PhD) at the University of Leiden on a thesis concerning taxation and public international law.

Professional career

Born in 1955, Martha is a distinguished international legal practitioner based in London who was formerly the General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs of INTERPOL (Lyon, France) (2004-2008) and of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)^[1] (Rome, Italy) (2008-2013). He was the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands Antilles (1998–2002) and Minister Plenipotentiary in the Netherlands Permanent Representation to the European Union (1990–1998). He also worked as Counsellor in the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund (Washington, D.C) and, prior to this, as Legal Advisor to the Central Bank of the Netherlands Antilles (Curaçao, NA).

Academic experience

Martha is an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University, in which capacity he has been a Visiting Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore since 2007 in the NYU@NUS program. In the past he was also an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law of the American University in Washington (1988–1989). From 1983 to 1986 he was a lecturer in law at the University of the Netherlands Antilles.

Expertise

His areas of expertise include public international law, public international finance, international law enforcement cooperation, international monetary and economic law, international taxation, and European Union law. His current transactional and advisory practice concentrates on multilateral development finance and international institutional law. In the past he was involved in the distribution of the assets and liabilities of the Central Bank of the Netherlands upon the departure of Aruba from the Netherlands Antilles and was the Secretary to the Gold Fund of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. He also represented the Netherlands Antilles in a GATT-litigation and before the European Court of Justice.

Honours

Martha was awarded the 1989 Mitchell B. Carroll Prize of the International Fiscal Association. In 2004, he was appointed Officer in the Royal Order of Orange of the Netherlands.

Publications

He has published extensively on international law, both in Dutch and in English, including four books:

Books

• The Financial Obligation in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2015)
• The Legal Foundations of INTERPOL (Hart Publishing, 2010),^[2]
• Tax Treatment of International Civil Servants (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2009)
• The Jurisdiction to Tax in International Law (Kluwer, 1989).

References