Practice Areas

The firm’s criminal defence practice has more than 30 years of in-depth experience and regularly assists corporate clients and their senior executives when they encounter criminal law issues which can arise when carrying out an economic activity. The team assists and defends clients, whose identity is not disclosed due to the specific nature of this area of law, in connection with, for example, the following:

• breach of the duty of integrity (atteintes à la probité) (corruption involving public officials or private sector workers in companies with a public service mission, influence peddling, unlawful acquisition of an interest, the offence of favouritism by public officials, extortion or dishonest receipt of money by a public official (concussion));
• embezzlement (misappropriation of corporate assets, criminal offence of breach of trust, fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy);
• criminal liability with respect to securities law (market abuse);
• tax evasion (tax fraud and laundering of proceeds from tax fraud);
• criminal liability with respect to employment law (non-compliance with labour law regulations, cases of breach affecting employees or external contractors, harassment);
• criminal liability with respect to consumer protection laws (misleading commercial practices, deceiving the consumer with fraudulent intent) and competition law (cartels, breach of sector-specific regulations);
• criminal liability in insolvency matters (fraudulent bankruptcy, fraud, etc.);
• criminal liability with respect to digital law (cyber-criminality, data protection breach, etc.).

The Bredin Prat criminal defence team regularly assists clients:

• in initial investigations conducted by officials from the criminal investigation department or by officials from various administrative authorities (French financial markets authority (the AMF), the French directorate general for competition, consumer protection and anti-fraud investigations (the DGCCRF), including at a regional level (DDPP), etc.);
• in pre-trial investigations conducted by one or more investigating judges;
• in French domestic, cross-border and multi-jurisdictional proceedings or investigations, including those relating to cases before specialised courts (e.g., the French JUNALCO court for complex cases of organised crime) and international mutual assistance proceedings;
• in relation to all of the above, in the exchanges with court officials (public prosecutors, France’s Financial Prosecution Office (Parquet National Financier – PNF), investigating judges) and representatives of the relevant French government departments (including the Budget Department, the Treasury, Ministry of Justice, specialised departments, etc.).

With respect to the above, the white-collar criminal defence team regularly negotiates and concludes various alternative defence procedures (the French, more restrictive, form of plea bargaining called comparution sur reconnaissance préalable de culpabilité – CRPC) or criminal settlement procedures (notably the French DPA called conventions judiciaires d’intérêt public – CJIP), and has vast experience in assisting clients in such matters.