The accounts of a company, a financial transaction or a management decision can look like a bad deal and, examined closely, turn out to carry criminal relevance. White-collar crime is the field where business activity meets the Criminal Code, a technical and often documentary field in which the detail decides the matter.

This is the core of my criminal practice, and it ties in with business law. The company and its directors can come to me when they face a charge, and so can those harmed by such conduct, and in either case they deal with me directly.

The offenses I handle

Breach of fiduciary duty and misappropriation

In corporate disputes the usual figures are the director who exceeds their powers and harms the assets they manage (article 252 of the Criminal Code) and whoever appropriates what they received with an obligation to deliver or return it (article 253).

Corporate offenses

The offenses here are falsifying the annual accounts, imposing or exploiting harmful resolutions and obstructing shareholders' rights (articles 290 and following of the Criminal Code). When they grow out of a shareholder dispute, the guide on shareholder disputes and director liability explains how they interact with the civil claim.

Against the Public Treasury and Social Security

Tax fraud, which becomes a criminal offense when the amount defrauded exceeds 120,000 euros (article 305 of the Criminal Code), and Social Security fraud, an area where regularizing in time can change the outcome entirely.

Punishable insolvency

Concealment of assets and other conduct frustrating enforcement (article 257 and following), together with criminal insolvency, at the point where criminal and insolvency law meet.

Money laundering

Acquiring, converting or transferring assets of criminal origin (article 301 of the Criminal Code), increasingly present in economic investigations.

Corporate criminal liability

A legal person can be criminally liable for offenses committed on its behalf and for its direct or indirect benefit, though only for those offenses where the Code expressly provides for it (article 31 bis of the Criminal Code). An effective compliance program can mitigate or exclude that liability, which is why it is worth having one before the problem arises.

The documents decide

Matters here are won or lost on paper, because the evidence is usually documentary and abundant. I rebuild the transaction step by step, put in order the documents that decide the case (minutes, accounts, correspondence, expert reports) and check which wording of each provision was in force on the date of the facts, not today's.

Every citation, statutory or case-law, is checked against its official source before I rely on it. Where the matter calls for it I bring in economic experts and coordinate with the business-law side of the firm, and I tell you from the start what it is reasonable to expect.

See how I work

White-collar crime