Criminal searches and seizures

Criminal searches and seizures: defending your rights, protecting your assets

Criminal search and seizure procedures are particularly intrusive investigative measures that can profoundly affect a company’s business, a manager’s reputation, or the confidentiality of sensitive data. Faced with these measures, which are often implemented in complex cases with high financial or regulatory stakes, ECLIPSE intervenes with efficiency, precision, and confidentiality.

Our strategic support in the event of criminal searches

We assist our clients, whether they are companies, executives, financial sector professionals, banking institutions, or investors, in the context of:

• Criminal searches of companies or homes
• Seizures of computer equipment (servers, cloud storage, emails, work phones, digital media)
• Document seizures (accounting documents, customer files, contracts)
• Searches in connection with international letters rogatory or European investigation decisions

Our lawyers are present in real time during the search in order to:

• Ensure strict compliance with the search warrant, both in terms of its wording and its factual, criminal, and temporal scope
• Ensure the proportionality of the search and seizure measures
• Protect documents covered by professional secrecy or business secrecy
• Identify procedural irregularities that may justify a request for nullity or a request for restitution before the competent court

Criminal seizures and confiscations: major asset issues

We intervene in the context of:

• Precautionary criminal seizures (bank assets, real estate, vehicles, securities, shares)
• Seizures of the proceeds or instruments of the offense
• Seizures of equivalent value and special or in rem confiscation procedures
• Seizures of assets in the context of international or cross-border mutual legal assistance proceedings

Our lawyers rigorously analyze:

• The legality of the seizure (judicial authorization, scope of the measure, link to the offense)
• The rights of any third parties who may have been harmed
• The value of the seized assets and the proportionality of the measure

We defend our clients by:

• Filing appeals for release, appeals for annulment, challenges to seizures, and requests for restitution
• Referring the matter to the chamber of the district court or the courts of appeal
• Contacting the investigating judge’s office or the public prosecutor
• Coordinating with foreign lawyers in the context of international seizures or cross-border confiscations

Procedural nullities, appeals, and protection of fundamental rights

ECLIPSE develops a technical and litigation approach aimed at:

• Raising nullities of searches (procedural irregularities, exceeding the scope of the warrant, violation of the rights of the defense)
• Challenge abusive or disproportionate seizures
• Request the return of seized property, including during investigations
• Prepare urgent appeals before the competent courts

Searches targeting regulated professions: professional secrecy and confidentiality

Our firm works specifically with professionals subject to professional secrecy, including:

• Lawyers, notaries, accountants, auditors, banks, management companies
• In the context of sensitive searches conducted at the request of foreign judicial authorities, in order to guarantee respect for professional secrecy and to ensure that the seizure of documents directly related to the investigation is strictly necessary, subject to information or documents covered by professional secrecy
• To enforce the principle of the inviolability of exchanges protected by lawyers’ professional secrecy, whether in litigation or in the context of legal counsel, or compliance with the principle of “legal privilege” in Anglo-Saxon law

We act immediately to:

• Notify the President of the Bar, in the context of a search of a law firm, so that he or she can be represented during the search – follow up on the case and provide the President of the Bar with the necessary information on the outcome of the criminal proceedings
• Filter the seized documents and guarantee confidentiality
• Obtain, if necessary, an order for the return or deferred sealing of documents covered by attorney-client privilege
• Challenge the international transmission of sensitive information not covered by the legal scope

Technical and responsive expertise in criminal defense against seizures and searches

Our practice of criminal business law, coupled with in-depth knowledge of police investigation mechanisms and financial and economic crime services, enables us to defend our clients rigorously and effectively, whether the proceedings are national, European, or international.

Are you facing a search, criminal seizure, or cross-border confiscation request?

Contact our team for rapid and confidential assistance, whether in an emergency or in anticipation of future measures.