The expertise of the Criminal Business Law team as advisory (sentencing risk prevention) or trial (criminal proceedings) counsel is called on whenever criminal issues are involved.
The team’s lawyers have a perfect command of criminal procedural rules and their articulation with the rules governing related civil proceedings. They have also acquired specific skills in press law and criminal labour law.
The team works in French, English, and German. Involved at all stages, the partners remain in overall charge of the case and evolve procedural strategies.
Where necessary, the team’s lawyers can draw on the law firm’s other areas of expertise (company law, tax, bankruptcy law, etc.).
The team’s clients include French and foreign industrial groups, commercial businesses and service providers, as well as private individuals.
What We Do
• We help clients anticipate criminal law risks: drawing-up of (where applicable intragroup) delegations.
• We provide assistance to clients in police custody, we counsel them before and after witness hearings.
• We represent clients during judicial investigations: giving them access to the investigation file, drawing up petitions and requests, appealing before the investigating chamber, assisting indicted clients, witnesses qualifying for assistance by counsel, and plaintiffs claiming damages during hearings and confrontations.
• We implement alternative proceedings (out-of-court settlements, mediation, arbitration, appearance after a guilty plea).
• We provide assistance to indicted clients and plaintiffs for damages before the criminal courts (courts of appeal, investigating chambers, criminal courts for minor offences, police courts, etc.).
Highlights
Life Sciences
- Criminal proceedings relating to the application of the French DMOS act prohibiting businesses from granting benefits to pharmaceutical companies
Competition law
- Criminal investigation of the violation of the trade secrets of a company specializing in top-of-the-range ceramics
Company law
- Criminal proceedings relating to the obstruction of the company auditor of a joint-stock company
Commercial law
- Criminal investigation of cases of embezzlement, misappropriation of corporate property, and receiving of stolen property by the officers of a foreign airline company
- Criminal proceedings relating to deceptive advertising and deception concerning the quality of real property offered up for sale by a franchisee real estate agency of a major real estate group
- Criminal investigation of cases of fraud and deception concerning the quality of a top-of-the-range catamaran
- Criminal investigation of embezzlement by the officers of an insurance group during its privatization
Copyright law
- Criminal investigation of the infringement of works by major artists and the distribution of the resulting counterfeits followed by criminal proceedings
Consumer law
- Criminal investigation of cases of abuse of weakness when taking out life-insurance contracts
Industrial risk
- Criminal investigation of the manslaughter of passengers following a fire in a Franco-German train
- Criminal manslaughter proceedings following an airliner crash
Droit social
- Criminal proceedings relating to the harassment of a member of the staff of a Parisian department store
- Criminal proceedings relating to the illegal subcontracting of labour and concealed work in the field of computer engineering subcontracting (SSII)
- Criminal proceedings relating to the bribery of employees of a company manufacturing medical equipment by the subcontracting company
Tax
- Criminal investigation and proceedings relating to VAT fraud
