Leigh Dundas is a veteran litigation attorney who spent a majority of the last two decades of counsel to international law firms. Beginning her career in the early 90’s as litigation counsel at Irell & Manella, LLP, Leigh handled multi-million dollar cases for Fortune 500 clients including Volkswagen of America, Advanta Bank, and William Lyon Company, as well as high-profile work for government municipalities and sports teams including The St. Louis Rams and City of West Covina. While much of her work related to general business matters, Ms. Dundas also focused on litigation that involved hi tech, environmental, and trade secret aspects. She continued this focus when she joined Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in 2000 of counsel.
Thereafter, Ms. Dundas was asked to join The A21 Campaign in the dual capacity of General Counsel and Prosecutions Director for Asia. In that role, Leigh spent a significant amount of time on the ground in south-east Asia, liaising with foreign governments to reach bilateral Memoranda of Understanding allowing for operation of undercover surveillance of child brothels by former US law enforcement assets. While in Asia, Leigh also arranged meetings with high-ranking executives at major banking institutions – including heads of in-house counsel for some of the world’s largest financial institutions – who remained concerned that Asian banking conglomerates were being used by human traffickers to launder cash from the illicit sex trade. In that capacity, Leigh worked closely with both NGOs and Asian banks in the formulation of a plan to have on-the-ground investigators amass evidence of money laundering by child brothels and then use secure protocols to relay said data to the banking institutions – as banks are required to place holds on accounts when there is credible evidence such accounts are being utilized to launder monetary proceeds of crimes. Currently, this evidence is being automatically relayed to over 7,000 banks worldwide – via Thomson Reuters World Check and other premier providers of intelligence profiles – so that banks may perform due diligence and ensure trafficking proceeds are not being laundered through their accounts.
In the last half-decade, Leigh’s first-hand knowledge of the trafficking problems in southeast Asia- as well as her extensive network in the region – have proven invaluable to the U.S. government. In 2013, Leigh was appointed by the House Foreign Affairs Chairperson, Congressman Ed Royce, to the 113th Congressional Human Trafficking Congressional Advisory Committee, to assist in the identification of trafficking problems worldwide and help formulate US policy to combat same, and has performed similar work for the US Department of Homeland Security. In February 2014, Leigh spent three weeks in Sun Gai Kolok – a modern day Sodom & Gomorrah that is comprised of 140 child brothels on the Thai-Malay border- traveling in excess of 100 mph to avoid road-side insurgent violence while en route to meet with sex slaves trapped in the brothels, and to interview the Mafia-connected brothel owners. Leigh then led a group of VIPs and film crew back into Sun Gai Kolok later that month to document first-hand the horrors of the child-sex trade, until Thailand’s coup d’etat and threatened closure of the Bangkok International Airport forced a retreat. In early 2016, Ms. Dundas co-founded the American office of Liberty Global to work in tandem with her human rights non-profit, Justice Be Done, in continuing to forward the above initiatives.
Presentation Title: “You Stand Up”