Practice Areas

The firm’s criminal defence practice has more than 30 years of in-depth experience and regularly assists corporate clients and company directors when they find themselves faced with criminal law issues relating to their business activity. The criminal defence team assists and defends clients, whose identity is not disclosed due to the nature of this area of law, in connection with, for example, the following:

• breach of the duty of integrity (atteintes à la probité) (corruption by 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 officer (concussion));
• embezzlement (misappropriation of corporate assets, criminal offence of breach of trust);
• 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, breach affecting employees or external contractors, harassment);
• criminal aspects of environmental law (pollution, industrial waste, impact on water quality and biodiversity).

Bredin Prat’s criminal defence team regularly advises clients:

• in the initial phase of an administrative or judicial police investigation conducted by the relevant authorities;
• in judicial 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 the court officials (public prosecutor, French financial prosecution office (Parquet National Financier), investigating judges) and the representatives of the relevant ministries (Budget, Treasury, Justice, specialised departments);

With respect to the above, the white-collar crime 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.