Economic criminal cases – legal risks and defence specificities

The specific feature of economic criminal cases is that the case usually centres not on a single event, but on a complex financial, accounting or corporate process. The authority examines contracts, invoices, bank-account data, accounting materials, electronic correspondence and business decisions, and then attempts to draw criminal-law conclusions from them.

In these cases, the defence cannot be separated from understanding the economic background. A poor business decision, a tax-law dispute, a contractual performance problem and a deliberately constructed criminal scheme must be assessed differently.

Specific statutory offences

In economic criminal cases, the most frequently encountered offences are budget fraud, fraud, embezzlement, breach of trust, money laundering, insolvency offences and violations of accounting rules. In budget fraud cases, typical issues include invoices with false content, fictitious performance, unauthorised exercise of the right to deduct tax, use of subsidy funds for purposes other than those intended, or failure to make payments into the budget.

In embezzlement cases, the usual question is whether property entrusted to the offender was unlawfully appropriated or treated as their own. In breach of trust cases, the focus is on the breach of asset-management duties, the financial disadvantage caused and the limits of decision-making discretion. In fraud cases, proving deception, maintaining another person in error, the intent to obtain unlawful gain and the damage caused is decisive.

Aggravated cases and sentencing ranges

The sentencing ranges in these cases are typically influenced by the amount of financial disadvantage or damage caused, business-like commission, criminal association, criminal organisation, managerial position and the method of commission. In budget fraud cases, the sentencing range may extend from less serious cases to cases causing particularly large or exceptionally significant financial disadvantage, punishable by several years of imprisonment.

In practice, the precise determination of financial disadvantage is itself a separate defence issue. It matters whether the authority calculates with gross or net amounts, whether it accepts the value of actual performance, and how it treats tax shortfalls, refunds, the purpose of the subsidy agreement or amounts actually recovered.

Investigative and evidentiary specificities

The investigation often begins with a house search, seizure of documents, electronic data extraction and obtaining bank-account data. In NAV cases, accountants, company directors, employees, subcontractors and business partners are often heard as witnesses, and the statements obtained are then compared with invoicing and banking data.

Expert evidence plays a central role, but an accounting expert’s or tax expert’s opinion cannot replace independent proof of criminal liability. The defence must examine the expert methodology, the underlying data, the documents taken into account and ignored, and whether the expert has crossed into the assessment of legal questions.

Typical judicial practice

In judicial practice, recurring questions include whether budget fraud should be assessed as a single unit or as several acts, when business-like commission can be established, and how financial disadvantage must be calculated. Among the published decisions of the Curia there is guidance stating that the statutory unity of budget fraud under the Special Part is not the same as continuing unity and therefore does not in itself exclude examination of business-like commission.

In breach of trust cases, courts typically examine whether there was a specific asset-management duty, what constituted its breach, and whether the decision in question was damage-causing conduct in a criminal-law sense or merely a business decision that later proved unsuccessful.

Defence directions

One key element of the defence is to show whether there was actual performance, a lawful business purpose, market risk or a contractual background behind the economic event that the authority wrongly evaluates in criminal-law terms. It is particularly important for the defence to organise the entire case file independently, because the authority’s interpretation is often only one possible reading of the case.

A suspect’s statement may be particularly risky in such cases. An imprecise explanation, a misunderstood business decision or an insufficiently considered accounting statement may later become the interpretative framework for the entire case.

When should you contact a lawyer immediately?

If a house search, document seizure, NAV request, freezing order, suspect summons or restriction affecting a company bank account occurs, it is not advisable to wait. In economic criminal cases, decisions made in the first days often determine the room for manoeuvre throughout the proceedings.

If you or a relative need defence assistance in an economic criminal case involving budget fraud, breach of trust, embezzlement, money laundering or another property-related offence, please contact me urgently.