By Prof. Dr. Viktor Winkler, LL.M. (Harvard), Attorney at German and EU law and professor of law, Frankfurt/Germany
I advise clients in the most sudden and the most dramatic legal crisis clients can find themselves in.
No. I am not a defense attorney.
Criminal penalties emerge after an organic and long-winded process for which the client will, or, at least, can, prepare quite thoroughly. In my line of work companies cannot prepare. They have no time to prepare. No time to wait, no time to adjust to what is, by far, the most dramatic intrusion the law has to offer: (International) sanctions. They come as quickly as a summer storm and are, regularly, as aggressive as a hurricane. What makes sanctions measures, by any government, so dramatic is not merely that they are never announced to the ...