Business criminal law is not a remote eventuality reserved for extraordinary events. It is a structural risk that accompanies every phase of corporate life: the closing of a tax year and the subsequent audit by the Guardia di Finanza, an INPS or INAIL inspection, a dispute with a supplier that ends in a criminal complaint, a report to the Public Prosecutor by a competitor, the onset of financial distress, an accident in the workplace, a tender procedure with a public authority, the updating of the organisational model under Legislative Decree 231/2001.
The first news that reaches the entrepreneur — a notice of investigation, a request for documents, the execution of a search warrant — interrupts operational continuity and demands rapid procedural choices. The decisions taken in the first forty-eight hours (what to hand over, what to state, which acts to carry out or suspend) condition the entire subsequent course of the proceedings. For this reason the firm favours a non-episodic approach: criminal-law assistance to a business requires prior knowledge of its organisational chart, delegations of functions, document flows and existing contractual relationships.
The firm assists sole traders and companies, management and supervisory bodies, statutory auditors, executives, middle managers, technical professionals and victims of crime at every stage of the proceedings: from preliminary investigations to trial, from alternative procedures to appeals, through to enforcement and asset-prevention proceedings. The work also covers the pre-proceedings stage, through preventive defensive investigations (Article 391-nonies of the Code of Criminal Procedure) and internal criminal-audit activity.
Tax offences (Legislative Decree 74/2000)
Legislative Decree no. 74 of 10 March 2000, repeatedly reformed (most recently by Legislative Decree 87/2024 implementing the tax-reform mandate), governs the offences with the highest statistical incidence in business criminal litigation: fraudulent tax returns through the use of invoices or other documents for non-existent transactions (Article 2), fraudulent tax returns through other devices (Article 3), inaccurate tax returns (Article 4), failure to file (Article 5), issuing invoices for non-existent transactions (Article 8), concealment or destruction of accounting records (Article 10), failure to pay withholding taxes (Article 10-bis), failure to pay VAT (Article 10-ter), undue offsetting (Article 10-quater), fraudulent evasion of tax payment (Article 11).
Assistance covers the entire dynamics of the proceedings: from the adversarial exchange during the tax audit, to the management of the relationship between criminal and tax proceedings (with particular attention to the preclusions of Article 21-bis of Legislative Decree 74/2000, introduced in 2024), to the assessment of access to the grounds of non-punishability for payment of the tax debt (Article 13) and to mitigating circumstances. Preventive seizure aimed at confiscation by equivalent — common practice in tax proceedings — requires a prompt precautionary appeal and a careful verification of the quantum of the profit.
Corporate offences (Articles 2621 et seq. of the Civil Code)
The subject, thoroughly reformed by Law 69/2015, covers false corporate reporting in unlisted companies (Article 2621 of the Civil Code) and in listed companies (Article 2622), minor offences (Article 2621-bis), false statements in auditors' reports or communications (Article 2624, now incorporated into Legislative Decree 39/2010), obstruction of supervision (Article 2625), unlawful distribution of profits and reserves (Article 2627), unlawful transactions in the company's own shares (Article 2628), transactions to the detriment of creditors (Article 2629), failure to disclose a conflict of interest (Article 2629-bis), breach of fiduciary duty over corporate assets (Article 2634), breach of duty following the giving or promising of benefits (Article 2635), private-sector bribery and the corresponding incitement, market rigging (Article 2637), and the offences protecting the supervisory function (Article 2638). The defence requires a combined command of corporate civil law and of the criminal-law technique of the offence definition.
Bankruptcy and business-crisis offences (Legislative Decree 14/2019)
The Business Crisis and Insolvency Code has recast the offences formerly contained in the Bankruptcy Law: fraudulent bankruptcy concerning assets, records and preferences (Articles 322-323 of the Code); simple bankruptcy (Article 323); abusive recourse to credit (Article 325); offences within negotiated composition and arrangement procedures (Articles 341 et seq.). The new architecture — with the significance of "adequate arrangements" under Article 2086 of the Civil Code and the early-warning tools — affects the subjective elements of simple bankruptcy and requires directors to keep documented evidence of their management choices. The firm assists directors, statutory auditors, liquidators and receivers, as well as third parties facing claw-back and liability actions.
Offences against public administration
The offences of bribery proper and improper bribery, bribery in judicial acts, undue inducement to give or promise benefits (Article 319-quater of the Criminal Code), extortion by a public official, embezzlement of public funds, abuse of office (in the wording in force following the 2024 reform), trading in unlawful influence (Article 346-bis of the Criminal Code), and interference with public auctions and with contractor selection procedures (Articles 353 and 353-bis of the Criminal Code) demand particular care in dealings with contracting authorities, supervisory bodies and public concession-holders. The defence necessarily combines with the analysis of the administrative aspects (anti-mafia disqualification orders, exclusion from tenders, entries in the ANAC register).
Corporate liability for criminal offences (Legislative Decree 231/2001)
The corporate entity is directly liable, through financial penalties and disqualification measures, for predicate offences committed in its interest or to its advantage by senior officers or subordinates. The catalogue of predicate offences has progressively expanded and today includes, among others, offences against public administration, computer crimes, corporate offences, market abuse, manslaughter and negligent injury arising from breach of accident-prevention rules, environmental offences, self-laundering, tax offences and smuggling offences. The firm's work is structured on two levels: the defence of the entity in criminal proceedings and in proceedings for the application of interim disqualification measures; and advisory work on the drafting, updating and testing of organisational and management models, with assistance to the Supervisory Body on information flows and verification activities.
Property offences and money laundering
Fraud (Article 640 of the Criminal Code) and aggravated fraud, misappropriation (Article 646), receiving stolen goods (Article 648), money laundering (Article 648-bis), use of money of unlawful origin (Article 648-ter) and self-laundering (Article 648-ter.1) are recurrent offences in proceedings involving business activity, especially where there are intra-group transactions, assignments of receivables or cross-border financial flows. The defence requires an analytical examination of the funds, of the causal link between the predicate offence and the disputed transaction, and of the threshold of actual deceptive capacity of the conduct.
Workplace safety
Charges of manslaughter (Article 589 of the Criminal Code) and negligent injury (Article 590) aggravated by the breach of accident-prevention rules, read together with Legislative Decree 81/2008, involve employers, executives, supervisors, heads of the prevention service, safety coordinators, designers and principals. The reconstruction of the chain of delegations, the formal and substantive verification of the risk-assessment document, and the examination of whether the omitted conduct could actually have been required are the key steps of the defence. To this is added the liability of the entity under Article 25-septies of Legislative Decree 231/2001.
Acting for the victim
The business is frequently the victim: contractual fraud, misappropriation by employees or collaborators, unauthorised access to computer systems, disclosure of trade secrets, unfair competition with criminal relevance, trademark counterfeiting, computer fraud. Assistance includes drafting the criminal complaint, joining the proceedings as a civil party, conducting defensive investigations in support of the private prosecution, and maintaining the relationship with the public prosecutor through briefs and documented evidentiary contributions.
The firm's method
The work rests on evidentiary rigour established from the very first stage. Every charge is broken down into its constituent elements and reconstructed through documentary verification, the examination of digital flows, the interviewing of persons with knowledge of the facts in the form of defensive investigations under Articles 391-bis et seq. of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the use of party-appointed technical consultants (accountants, IT experts, safety engineers) selected according to the specific issue in dispute.
The principal's long training as a judicial police officer translates, on the defence side, into the ability to anticipate the prosecution's evidence-gathering logic: to understand which documents the prosecution will look for, which expert reports it will commission, which narrative reconstruction it will try to sustain. This experience is complemented by the systematic study of the statute of the defence, the subject of a doctoral path devoted to defensive investigations (Alma Mater Studiorum, Bologna, 2015), which informs the investigative methodology applied to individual proceedings.
The firm maintains a direct relationship with the client, without intermediaries: every document is drafted and every hearing is argued by the principal. For specific technical needs (product surveys, digital forensics, business valuations) the firm draws on stable collaborations with consultants of proven independence.
Related areas
- Defensive investigations under Articles 391-bis et seq. of the Code of Criminal Procedure — dedicated sub-page
- Tax law and tax litigation
- Commercial law and business crisis
- Profile and training of the principal
For a first discussion
To present a concrete situation and assess together whether defensive or advisory work is appropriate, an appointment can be arranged by contacting the firm at Corso della Repubblica 19, Forlì, using the details in the Contact section. The first meeting is devoted to framing the matter and defining the scope of any professional engagement.