Enforcement and Economic Criminal Law

As a municipality, do you want to impose a penalty payment order on a business that is not complying with the rules, but are not sure how to formulate the order? Or are you just being written to by the municipality for allegedly building in violation of your permit? Or are you operating a business in violation of applicable environmental regulations according to the environmental department? And could this even constitute an economic offense? Or are you facing a workplace accident? Then engage one of our specialists in enforcement law or environmental criminal law.

What is enforcement law?

Enforcement law is the set of rules and procedures that oversee compliance with laws and regulations by individuals and companies. Environmental criminal law or economic criminal law oversees the criminal enforcement of environmental offenses or other offenses under the Economic Offenses Act. With the latter, you can think of workplace accidents.

The differences between administrative enforcement law and environmental criminal law seem large, but in practice the boundary between an administrative offense and a criminal offense often turns out to be a gray area. This is particularly true for the difference in powers that agencies have in supervising or investigating. If there is detection, then you also have more rights.

Furthermore, the consequences of being designated as an administrative offense or as an environmental offense for the person being written to are quite large. Think of a criminal record for a director of a legal entity in the case of an economic offense. It can also make it more difficult or impossible to obtain, modify or even revoke licenses for your business under the Bibob Act.

What can you expect from us?

Enforcement law and environmental criminal law are two areas of law that are receiving increasing attention. This is due to the increased need to protect the environment or ensure safety. Our specialists can assist you in both administrative enforcement proceedings and criminal prosecution for suspicion of an economic crime. This combination of specializations means that our specialists can switch well between the different legal areas.

Some examples for which you can use our specialists:

Strategic thinking on questions about supervision and investigation;
Advising and litigating on an imposed penalty under coercion or a penalty under administrative coercion;
Advising and litigating on a recovery decision;
Formulating a penalty;
Providing assistance during interrogation;
Advising and litigating in suspicion of an environmental offense or economic offense.

Whatever you engage our specialists for, you can always count on us to think pragmatically and proactively with you. We prefer to do this at the earliest possible stage of the development process. In this way, our specialists can possibly try to prevent the penalty under coercion from being imposed, or an offense from being designated as an economic offense.