Also in comparison with February, March 2018 does not seem to be the month of recovery but rather a mixed bag if not the first signal of another bumby road ahead:
Coalition Agreement on Criminal Law for Enterprises
The discussion about the introduction of a specific criminal law for enterprises (“Unternehmensstrafrecht“) has been on and off the political agenda for several years, although it was rather quiet for the last year. Now, the Coalition Agreement of the (not so recently any more) sworn federal government resumes this discussion and envisages a comprehensive revision of the sanctioning law for enterprises.
Risk of double payment in case of a letter of comfort
In a ruling issued in January 2017, the German Federal Court of Justice (“Bundesgerichtshof, BGH“) has once again extended the scope of liability for a so-called “hard” letters of comfort.
The German economy in February 2018 – a dent only?
Well, well, at least, we will soon have a new government. That is the good news for the month. The economy, though, did not do so well in the last month, especially in comparison with January 2018:
Access to records in criminal proceedings
A suitable instrument to enforce civil claims?
After discovering criminal offenses, the question often arises on how to ensure that civil claims against the wrongdoer – for damages or recovery of the misappropriated assets – are best safeguarded and pursued. While the new rules on asset recovery (cf. here) undoubtedly make it easier to enforce civil claims for injured persons, it should not be ignored that the law enforcement agencies will still predominantly focus on the criminal aspects of the crime and not its civil consequences. For this reason alone, it may make sense not to wait for a criminal conviction, but to early on collect own knowledge also with regard to the enforcement of civil law claims. Also in order to be able to monitor the status of the criminal procedure, the inspection of the criminal files is a suitable instrument.
The German Economy in January 2018 – no breathtaking…
Due to my annual skiing-holidays, I am a little late with my January monthly and thus had to watch in awe the stock exchanges crashing all over the world. Currently, the search is ongoing for the reasons of this crash. I will dwell deeper into this in the next month. Before, let’s look back into January – where the GroKo was still under construction and the German economy seemed to happily hum along:
The German Economy in December 2017 – record ending to a record year!
As an awesome year drew where record chased record, Germans finally seemed to enjoyed themselves rather than going out on a shopping-spree. At least that is what the incoming figures about retail around Christmas tell us: Despite growing by a healthy three per cent, especially smaller retails seem to be not too happy about their … more
Reform of German Money Laundering Provisions
As already previously reported here, the German lawmaker was very active during the last weeks of the past legislative period – especially in the area of compliance / prevention of white collar crime. The reform of the German Money Laundering Act, including the introduction of a Transparency Register, hereby occupies a prominent position.
Due to the reduction of the upper limit for cash transactions (previously Euro 15,000), as well as the introduction of extensive analysis, documentation and reporting duties, which are generally not dependent on the size of the company, the effects for SMEs are still underestimated.
The German Economy in November 2017 – No Worries!
Despite (or because of?) a political turmoil after the failed “Jamaica”-coalition talks in Germany (others would say: normal political circumstances), the economy is doing quite well, even if the DAX showed some weakness in November:
The German Economy in October 2017 – on the rise
It is getting quite boring to announce record after record in the German economy: From DAX to employment and from industrial output to ifo – record-highs everywhere. We Germans are not accustomed to such a lengthy period of record-growht. There are, however, not many pessimists left now who are willing to predict any sort of crisis. And I am currently at least not one of them. First, let’s look into the German economy with the help of several key indicators: