Criminal and Administrative Practice

We understand the logic of law enforcement agencies and our lawyers always act to minimize any aggravation and to prevent the situation from becoming more severe; we are always looking for an opportunity to “bargain” with authorised bodies within the legal framework and using legal methods, for the benefits of clients.

Even in hard conditions always there are options, instead of the advice “to wrap yourself in a white sheet and slowly crawl to the cemetery”, we recommend to attract the press, spark public outcry and use any opportunity for protection.

Our solutions:

Our lawyers never recommend giving all evidence in the heat of the moment or about all persons, as usually might be to the liking of law enforcement agencies.

We recommend to adhere to consistent logic, correctly interpret facts, guard tongue and not to take law enforcement officers on their word, any official testimony, in any case, must comply with the consistent logic of clients, to minimize the risks to turn from a ‘witness’ into the ‘accused’ if for some mysterious reasons the vision of law enforcement agencies will change later as it often happens in practice.

We know from experience how critical the testimony of accountants and couriers can become, and how important is to work correctly with witnesses.

In the area of pursuing liability on unscrupulous persons, asset recovery, the Smart & Loyal Team has gained a complex but effective experience of collaboration with law enforcement agencies, which enables us to support the position of claimants in relation to real progress in applications and cases; we do our best to ensure that applications and cases would not gather dust year after year and that authorised bodies would give relevant answers instead of runarounds.

Our services in this area:

• Protection of beneficiaries, business leaders, employees of companies and private individuals against law enforcement agencies and regulatory authorities in the event of criminal prosecution, risks of criminal prosecution;

• Work with witnesses, protection of the interests of witnesses, including cooperation with counsels of several persons involved, in the conditions a potential conflict of interests between several persons, minimization of turning the witness into the accused;

• Support in search of withdrawn assets, property, organisation of comprehensive activities aimed at the return of property, including activities in foreign jurisdictions, cooperation with law enforcement agencies of the foreign jurisdictions;

• Legal support for pre-investigation checks on the part of claimant;

• Legal support for victims of crimes in the recovery of damage to property and moral damage; civil suits in criminal trials;

More details for professionals:

• General crime area, including the provision of legal assistance to the persons that are parties to a criminal proceeding: protection of persons suspected and accused of committing crimes (general crime cases, work-related injury cases, tax cases etc.);

• Representation of interests and protection of rights of victims of economic crimes, support for investigation of economic crime cases;

• Support for claimants and protection in criminal proceedings in cases of private prosecution and in cases of private and public prosecution (including libel cases).

• Trainings for beneficiaries, managers and key employees, consultations, legal opinions and methodological recommendations to minimize potential criminal risks;

• Representation of interests in the course of preliminary verification of reports of a crime committed by alleged offenders.

Tax area:

• Representation of interests at the stage of preparation of objections to in-house audit report and field tax audit reports; participation in the review of audit materials (reduction of tax claims based on the results of consideration of the objections);

• Successful challenge of decisions of the tax authorities on appeal and through legal proceedings, including on the issues of obtaining “unjustified tax benefit” in connection with unscrupulous contracting parties (claim concerning fly-by-night companies), re-qualification of the taxpayer’s transactions by the tax authority (“claims concerning creation of tax evasion schemes”), reduction of tax penalties at least by 2 times in the event of justified claims of the tax authority;

• Return of overcharged amounts of tax, penalties and fines to the current accounts of companies, with interest;

• Prevention of indisputable recovery of arrear amounts from the current account;

• Advice on tax risks;

• Consultations in connection with the application of sanctions against individuals and organisations of the Russian Federation, including in relation to EU and US residents that make investments in projects in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Administrative proceedings:

• Provision of legal assistance to the persons involved in cases concerning administrative offences;

• Support for claimants’ interests in the cases concerning administrative offences, support of applications and prevention of stifling the applications and proceedings at executive government agencies, support for administrative cases.

Protection of interests in the area of antimonopoly regulation:

• Conclusions on the issues of antimonopoly legislation as well as of the legislation regulating the procurement activities of some economic entities;

• Preparation of documents in the sphere of state control over market concentration;

• Support for inspections of Antimonopoly Service authorities;

• Support for procedures for bringing to administrative responsibility on the initiative of the Antimonopoly Service authorities;

• Support of litigations with the participation of the Antimonopoly Service authorities.