Assistance before the criminal court

The council chamber decides on the report of the investigating judge, after hearing the prosecutor, the civil party and you as the person charged. It can rule that there are no grounds for prosecution, refer the case to the police tribunal, or to the correctional tribunal. It can also rule that an act, or the way evidence was gathered, is void.

As the person charged, you can only challenge a committal order on limited grounds. For irregularities or nullities, your appeal is admissible only if you already raised that point in written submissions before the council chamber. The same condition applies to a ground of inadmissibility or lapse of the prosecution, unless it arose after the hearing before the council chamber. The time limit is fifteen days from the order, and twenty-four hours if you are deprived of your liberty.

If the indictments chamber has already examined the regularity of the procedure, the same irregularities can no longer be raised before the trial judge. Only arguments about the weight of the evidence escape that rule. Our assistance for people suspected of fraud describes the whole criminal investigation.

A criminal settlement stays possible as long as no final judgment or final ruling has been given in the criminal case. That holds even after the investigating judge has been seized of it, or after the case is already pending before the tribunal. The competent court must still confirm that settlement, and it then reviews the legal conditions and the proportionality with the seriousness of the acts.

Your company and you are not automatically on the same side in this file. The criminal liability of the legal person does not exclude the liability of whoever committed the same acts or took part in them. Where the prosecution runs against the company and against its representative for the same or connected acts, the competent court appoints an ad hoc representative.

Has the judicial investigation already run longer than a year without closing, you can bring the matter yourself before the indictments chamber. We look with you at whether that step makes sense in your file.

For more than twenty years, our firm has assisted companies and entrepreneurs in criminal trials, from the first interview to the trial on the merits. Our criminal defence often starts as early as the first interview, well before this stage of the trial. Did you already benefit from our police interview assistance, this file then continues that work. If you already had access to the criminal file, we build here too on that knowledge. Is a lifting of the seizure also at stake, we treat it as part of the same file.

The council chamber decides, at the review of the procedure, whether your case is dropped, referred to the police tribunal, or referred to the correctional tribunal. It decides on the report of the investigating judge, after hearing the prosecutor, the civil party and you as the person charged. It can also rule that an investigative act is void.

As the person charged, you can only challenge a committal order on limited grounds, within fifteen days of the order. For irregularities or nullities, your appeal is admissible only if you already raised that point in written submissions before the council chamber. If you are deprived of your liberty, that period drops to twenty-four hours.

Yes, a criminal settlement stays possible as long as no final judgment or final ruling has been given in the criminal case, even after the case is already pending before the tribunal. The competent court must still confirm that settlement. It then reviews the legal conditions and the proportionality with the seriousness of the acts.

Has the judicial investigation already run longer than a year without closing, you can bring the matter yourself before the indictments chamber. We look with you at whether that step makes sense in your file.