board of directors

Aliya was called to the English and Bahamas Bars in 2004. She began her career in the Office of the Attorney General working in civil litigation and civil chambers. Thereafter she moved to Graham Thompson as an associate in Graham Thompson’s Financial Services Practice becoming partner in a short three years. Aliya left Graham Thompson in 2012 when she was selected to be the Chief Executive Officer of the Bahamas Financial Services Board. During that time, in addition to her extensive travel and promotional responsibilities, she led many policy and legislative initiatives including, authoring a VAT policy note for financial services, drafting the Investment Condominium Act (ICON) Act and perfecting it through industry input, and facilitating the introduction of SMART 007 through a BFSB working group.

Aliya returned to Graham Thompson in 2016 once again to the Financial Services Practice of the firm and her practice is now primarily focused on commercial and syndicated lending, debt and equity capital markets, banking, investment funds, securities, FinTech, and regulatory matters such as FATCA, CRS, AML/CFT. Aliya’s practical experience includes acting for commercial lending institutions in complex lending facilities and arrangers of capital market transactions, both securitized and unsecuritized. Since resuming her role at Graham Thompson, she has played a leading role in the development and revision of industry defining legislation including the Investment Funds Act, 2019 (as a consultant to the Securities Commission), and the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act, 2020 and in crafting and promoting policy initiatives on FinTech, Blockchain and digital assets.