News

Since April 2021, some information relating to the beneficial owner(s) of unlisted companies and legal entities incorporated in France is now freely accessible via the website “DATA INPI” managed by the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (French National Institute of Industrial Property).

This information includes: The identity, month and year of birth, country of residence and nationality of the beneficial owners, as well as the nature and extent of the beneficial interests they hold in the relevant company or legal entity.

Law No. 2019-222 of March 23, 2019 on the 2018-2022 Programming and Reform of the Justice System (the “Reform”) has amended the divorce process introduced by Law of May 26, 2004.

The health crisis has disrupted the legislative calendar and the entry into force of the Reform, initially planned for January 1, 2020, was then postponed to September 1, 2020, and finally did not take place until January 1, 2021.

The Compliance & Investigations Group of the World Law Group (WLG), a network of 59 leading independent law firms with more than 400 offices in major commercial centers worldwide, to which our Firm belongs, will host an online conversation with Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions, on May 20

Article authored by Pauline Kubat and published in the magazine Gambling.Re (May 2021 edition).

Gambling.Re is an independent platform dedicated to commenting gambling regulatory novelties across the globe, and issues an online magazine every month.

The French Anticorruption Agency (Agence Française Anticorruption, hereinafter “AFA”) published its 2020 annual report in March 2021.

This provides the opportunity to review the key figures of its audit activities in one infographic, four years after its creation by the Law of December 9, 2016 on transparency, fight against corruption and modernization of economic life, known as the “Sapin II” Law.

While these figures help us identify a trend concerning the types of audits carried out and the entities concerned, the AFA could in the future extend these audits by deciding to subject more companies to the compliance scheme, as it seems to envisage in its latest guidelines.

It is with immense satisfaction that our founding partner André Soulier learnt that the appeal filed by certain members of the association La Parole Libérée against the January 30, 2020 decision of the Lyon Court of Appeals of Lyon to acquit Cardinal Barbarin, former Archbishop, had been dismissed.

It is fortunate and salutary to see that the Cour de Cassation (French Supreme Court) recalled the importance of the concept of personality and the strict interpretation of criminal law.