Compliance Law Firm & Legal Services in Austria

CMS Compliance & Forensic Services: Experienced in compliance management, prevention and crisis management

Compliance management is an indispensable part of responsible corporate management. Regulatory requirements are on the increase, anti-corruption laws and codes of conduct are becoming ever more complex. The financial consequences of violations can be extremely serious, both for you (board of directors, management or employees) and for your company. Tailored to the company, a compliance management system can not only help to prevent violations of the law, but also minimise the liability risk of the company (and its management) in the event of a crisis.

Our legal experts will develop a bespoke compliance management system for your company. Our service covers the following areas:

• Practical compliance-consulting for the development and successful optimisation of compliance management systems;
• Supporting management to establish a compliance culture;
• Risk management (compliance due diligence, business partner screenings, compliance clauses in contracts);
• Implementation and ongoing support of whistle-blower systems (whistle-blower hotline, ombudsman); and
• Advice on the creation of a compliance management system and the drafting of corresponding compliance guidelines; provision of training (e.g. on anti-corruption, antitrust law, money laundering prevention, IT security and data protection, capital market law, product safety, public procurement law and competition law).

Compliance-relevant areas of law

The development of an effective compliance management system covers a wide range of legal areas in your company. Our compliance team, consisting of legal experts from various disciplines, understands the relevant issues in the following compliance-relevant legal areas:

• anti-corruption laws,
• labour law,
• foreign trade and export law,
• data protection,
• company law,
• intellectual property rights,
• money laundering and terrorist financing,
• capital markets law,
• antitrust law,
• medical and pharmaceutical law,
• product liability law,
• tax law,
• criminal law,
• environmental law, and
• public procurement law and competition law.

Our Forensic Services: Safely weather the crisis with CMS

Operational risks, bribery and corruption, labour law conflicts, antitrust violations or breaches of data protection regulations—the triggers that lead to a compliance crisis are complex and require highly qualified legal advice to successfully guide your company through it. CMS Forensic Services take a holistic approach to crisis management. We offer you a team of experienced attorneys who are available straight away for large internal investigations. We also bring together specialists from various disciplines for companies in crisis: criminal defence, e-discovery providers, crisis PR consultants, auditors or business detectives, who we can involve in internal investigations to uncover and clarify violations.

Decisive for you: Our CMS Forensic Services offer you a single contact partner who has an eye on all relevant compliance aspects and who will navigate you through the crisis efficiently.

Our Forensic Services include:

• Informing management and supervisory bodies about duties to act in the event of a compliance crisis, and developing a crisis management concept;
• Design, management and execution of internal investigations (forensic investigations);
• Processing facts, searching documents and e-mails with the help of forensic tools, conducting employee interviews;
• If necessary, asset repatriation and of payment-flow tracking;
• Development of solution strategies and immediate measures;
• Immediate provision of a team of lawyers to accompany official on-site investigations in the company;
• If necessary, involvement of defence lawyers and control of all aspects relevant to criminal law;
• Management of auditors, e-discovery service providers, economic detective agencies and crisis PR consultants, who may be called in if necessary;
• Advice on cooperation with the investigating authorities;
• Coordination and negotiation of the investigation with the works council;
• Accompaniment before and during an official search (“dawn raid”);
• Contingency plans for suitable dawn raid behaviour;
• Dawn raid training;
• Real-time help with house searches with the CMS Dawn Raid Assistant App;
• On-site support during a dawn raid: through our international CMS Dawn Raid Network, suitable lawyers worldwide are available to you straight away, either from one of our 71 CMS offices or from the offices of our partner law firms.
• Representation in subsequent official or court proceedings; and
• Assertion of claims for damages.

International Compliance Management Consulting

Benefit from our extensive experience with international anti-corruption laws, in particular the USA (FCPA) and Great Britain (UK Bribery Act). The applicability of foreign anti-corruption laws is particularly important for internationally active companies. We advise you on investigations into compliance violations of international regulations, in cooperation with other CMS offices.

Our Compliance and Forensic Services practice covers not only Austria, but also the 10 countries in which we have offices: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkiye and Ukraine.

Get to know our team of compliance experts here!