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The current reality of  corporate criminal law

Today’s criminal law must be shaped by the demands of the globalized market and inter-legality.

 

Corporate criminal law is a reality, especially after the interference from international bodies, such as the OECD, in nations’ legal systems.

 

Brazil is one of the countries that adopts soft law recommendations, legislating in matters affecting the economy and the companies’ operations.

 

Two extremely important laws are the result of soft law, the law on criminal organizations (law No. 12,850 of 2013) and the anti-corruption law (No. 12,846 of 2013).

 

The criminal lawyer must be prepared to use basic dogmatic concepts to ensure that companies are treated as lawful groupings, distancing them from the law for criminal organizations.

Competition issues
and corporate disputes

Major corporate disputes between shareholders and family members, corporate and competitive disputes between companies in the same sector, in the coupling of Criminal Law with Corporate Law, Competition Law, the regulatory sectors, Family Law and Civil Litigation shall create the area’s specialty’s link.

 

Only the personal dedication of the professionals will make them able to understand the details of the specific markets and build the litigation strategy or avoid litigation in communion with different fields of law for application in a specific sector of the economy.

Economic crises

and business management

In corporate economic crises, the criminalist can legally subsidize the manager's decision-making process, demonstrating the increase in risks in certain management options.

 

Labor lawsuits, civil defaults, tax, banking and environmental liabilities are situations of great distress for managers in companies undergoing economic crises, in which erroneous decisions can lead to future criminal proceedings.

During investigations already underway or processes, defenses specialized in Criminal Law combined with tax, financial, environmental, bankruptcy, among others, must refine strategies and share matters.

The risk of contracting with public power in Brazil

Contracting with the public authorities is perhaps the biggest risk area for companies today.

 

The risk starts even before the beginning of the bidding processes, going on during and after it.

  

Criminal law must be merged with Administrative Law and civil litigation, whether in the procedures of TCU (Federal Court of Auditors), CGU (Government Accountability Office), AGU (Federal Attorney’s Office), TCE’s and TCM’s (State and Municipal Audit Courts), anticipating possible results that generate incrimination in a preventive way.

 

Defenses in administrative procedures and public civil actions and administrative improbity should also be monitored by criminal lawyers, as the fields must communicate in aligned manner.

  

In police investigations, ministerial investigations and criminal cases, criminal lawyers must also interface with other areas of law.

Employees' offenses against the company
and against third parties

Acts of employees against the company must be meticulously dealt with in order to avoid labor liabilities, in view of ideological biases in labor justice, as well as acts against third parties outside the company, also allowing the extension of criminal liability to other hierarchical levels.

Envirommental Criminal Law

Industrial and agribusiness activities are inserted in an area of environmental penal risk.

 

Environmental Criminal Law is an area of Corporate Criminal Law and should be treated with the specialty of understanding the complexity of the so-called administrative accessory, which comes to complement criminal types by acts and regulations of the administrative authority.

 

In this area, the defense must be twice as careful due to the possibility of incriminating the company and not only the responsible individuals.

Financial Crimes

Financial and capital market offenses are areas of extreme specificity, in view of the link between the financial and capital markets to regulatory bodies such as BACEN (Brazilian Central Bank) and CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission), in which there will also be administrative accessory.

 

The specific foreign exchange evasion offense is common practice, even for those who do not belong to the financial market, being a crime of great power of contamination, and object of studies at the University of Sao Paulo by one of this office’s partner, Fabio Antonio Tavares dos Santos.

Crimes of everyday business

Tax errors and frauds

Problems of tax legislative interpretation

Duty evasion and Reception

The daily life of a company can still suffer with accounting errors, tax frauds, erroneous importation of machines and components, duty evasion or the use of components acquired without criteria, in the form of receiving stolen property.

 

Payments made on imports that lead to duty evasion can result in money laundering operations.

Crimes against the economic order
and the consumer

Agreements between companies that may seem healthy to the economy may be subject to procedures at CADE (Administrative Council for Economic Defense), resulting in investigations of cartel crimes.

 

Products for sale or exposed to consumers are extremely regulated in terms of form and marketing ways.

 

In all sectors of production and marketing, there are risks of criminal exposure due to errors, failures or poor management procedures.

Image protection and reputation

The information society has its existence on social networks and business platforms.

 

Image takes on a place of exceptional importance as a source of income and opportunities.

  

The importance of crimes against honor resurfaces, now committed on social networks, as well as the reputation of companies, and should be rescued by Criminal Law.

Protection of business secrets
and computer data

Computer-related crimes increasingly occupy the universe of companies in the concern of fraud and data security.

 

The process of gathering evidence prior to police action must be carried out in a thorough and targeted manner.

Compliance

A well-structured and implemented compliance system can prevent the practice of crimes within the company, as well as isolate such practice and its accountability in certain sectors without the uncontrolled contamination of lateral or superior executives.

 

Compliance, when well employed, is an exceptional management tool, but only if it is implemented in the correct hierarchical manner and employing the appropriate means.

Comon offenses
and classical criminal law

Professionals, ordinary people, civil servants, company executives and their family members may suffer misfortunes in their lives as perpetrators or victims.

  

From troubled divorces that may include couple’s violence, patrimonial deviations, involvement of children with the use of alcohol and illicit drugs, car accidents, aggressions, neighborhood problems, etc.

Particularities

To those affected by major police or ministerial operations, the lawyers’ support does not concern only the executives and those affected by restrictive measures.

 

Emotional support for family members and those close to the affected people is essential. As well as the support to those who are in a situation of restriction of freedom, whether full or partial.

 

The criminal process is always a painful period, but it is the magnificent result of human construction and evolution based on the tragedy of private revenge and the barbarities of injustice and ordeals.

 

There is no place for sentimentality, just as there is no allowance for insensitivity.

 

The pains of those involved are part of the criminal defense problem and must be handled with due consideration and guidance.

Be it in the way of producing pieces and reasons, of supporting their cases before the country’s courts, or in the refined personal treatment with the authorities and other involved parties, the office has in the art of defending the interests of its clients its motto, within the highest precepts of professional ethics, maintenance of its values, non-conformity with injustice and always respect for the most intrinsic laws and human values.

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