INVESTIGATIONS: Successfully navigating challenging international regulations

With the growth of enforcement activity worldwide, companies are being forced to create or adapt their internal structures and incorporate stricter, more sophisticated risk and compliance management systems, to detect and prevent legal risks and address any wrongdoing that could result in the infringement of domestic or international regulations.

The team at LALIVE, an international law firm renowned for its expertise and experience in international legal matters, in particular dispute resolution, investigations and regulatory advisory services, has been helping clients to successfully navigate and adapt to international regulations for the past 15 years. LALIVE has built a robust business crime defence and investigations practice, led by four partners based in Geneva and Zürich, all established practitioners with strong track records in domestic and cross-border litigation, international investigations, business crime defence as well as best-practice risk and compliance management, who combine an excellent understanding of the legal environment and enforcement agency processes, and practice in Switzerland and abroad.

The firm offers a truly international approach given its multilingual team of lawyers from jurisdictions across the world, its extensive network of professional contacts, with private sector experts in key jurisdictions, and its good standing with regulatory authorities and prosecutors, built from the firm’s solid work and active participation in the international legal circuit, as well as from its affiliation to several networks of high-calibre independent law firms.

A large volume of the practice’s work focuses on investigations in white-collar crime cases, involving the search and recovery of assets, and investigations in corruption, antitrust, tax fraud, money laundering, embezzlement and disloyal management-related cases.

In the last five years, the firm has broadened and strengthened its investigations, risk and compliance management, and regulatory practice, assisting companies in successfully treating legal risks, including self-reporting to enforcement agencies, and implementing state-of-the-art corporate governance and risk and compliance management systems, including specific anti-corruption, antitrust and data protection compliance programmes. Members of the team also act as lead project managers for clients in complex international investigations, taking care of budgets, cost controlling, tenders, vendor supervision and quality control, co-ordination and management of international expert teams, and the like.

Furthermore, the practice has longstanding experience in highly complex governmental investigations, large-scale fraud-related investigations, mutual judicial assistance proceedings and sanctions matters.

Highlights of the firm’s activity include involvement in high-profile fraud and anti-money laundering cases, involving investigations in multiple jurisdictions and a variety of sectors (including energy, banking and luxury), as well as representing a multinational group in the self-reporting of suspected bribery of foreign officials to the competent authorities and of a foreign financial service provider in a cross-border Libor-related investigation.

Against the increased scrutiny of banks in Switzerland, LALIVE also represents both banks and clients under the US Department of Justice’s Program For Non-Prosecution Agreements or Non-Target Letters for Swiss Banks and in relation to requests by foreign states to disclose information on their taxpayers with banking assets in Switzerland. LALIVE has also been approved by a foreign regulator as Swiss counsel to the monitor of a leading Swiss bank, advising on data protection, banking secrecy, regulatory and criminal law questions arising under the monitorship, including setting up an internal whistleblowing platform.

LALIVE has conducted extensive reviews of the risk and compliance management systems of a number of Swiss blue-chip companies, involving focused, cost-efficient internal reviews to provide managers with independent and reliable information for their decision-making process.

In 2015, LALIVE’s investigations practice was included among the top 100 investigations firms worldwide and two of its female practitioners among the top 100 Women in Investigations by Global Investigations Review. Its partners have been consistently ranked among leading practitioners in investigations, business crime defence and asset recovery by Who’s Who Legal, Chambers & Partners and The Legal 500.