Financial crime cases are unlike any other criminal file. There are no eyewitnesses and no clear moment of the offence. What there is instead is thousands of pages of documents, tax inspection reports and accounting expert opinions — and the accusation is born, as a rule, from an interpretation of those documents. An interpretation that can be challenged.
The types of case
Tax evasion
Governed by Law no. 241/2005. The most frequent allegations concern recording fictitious transactions, failing to record transactions, or concealing the taxable asset or source.
Money laundering
Governed by Law no. 129/2019. It almost always appears as a charge added on top of a predicate offence — most often tax evasion. And if the predicate offence falls away, the laundering charge frequently becomes unsustainable.
Income from virtual currency
An area where legislation has lagged behind practice and the legal classification is still taking shape. I have written on the criminal treatment of income from virtual currency transfers in the journal Penalmente Relevant, and discussed the subject on Romanian national television.
Cybercrime and fraud
Computer fraud, illegal access to a computer system, fraud in continuous form.
The non-punishment provision: what changed, and why it is not an automatic solution
Under Law no. 126/2024, in force since May 2024, the threshold up to which the special non-punishment provision applies in tax evasion matters was raised from EUR 100,000 to EUR 1,000,000.
The mechanism works as follows: if the damage is covered in full, increased by a percentage, the offence is not punished. The percentage rises as the case progresses — by 15% if payment is made within 30 days of the end of the inspection, by 25% during the criminal investigation, by 50% in the preliminary chamber or at trial until judgment, and by 100% on appeal.
This is where the trap lies. Paying the damage amounts, in practice, to an admission. Once made, you can no longer argue that nothing was owed, and you cannot recover the sums paid — even if the accusation would later have proved unfounded.
The decision whether to pay or to defend on the merits is one of the most important in the entire case, and it must be taken after a serious analysis of the evidence — not under the pressure of a 30-day deadline.
Where these cases are won
- The distinction between a tax debt and a criminal offence. Not every additional sum assessed by a tax inspection amounts to evasion. Intent must be proved separately.
- The quality of the accounting expert report. The reports in the file rest on assumptions that can be contested, and a counter-report is often decisive.
- The lawfulness of the evidence. How the documents were obtained, whether the digital search stayed within the limits of its authorisation, whether the data was properly preserved.
- Limitation periods. In financial cases that stretch over years, the limitation of criminal liability is always worth checking.
- Individualisation of liability. In a company with several shareholders and directors: who actually decided, and who merely signed.
What I do
Ideally I become involved during the tax inspection itself — before any criminal file exists. That is where the material on which the accusation will later be built takes shape, and the way you respond to the inspection matters for everything that follows.
If a criminal file is already open: full analysis of the case material, applications for evidence and expert reports, challenges to the legal classification, motions for nullity, and — in the preliminary chamber — verification of the lawfulness of the evidence. That stage is the one most often underestimated, and in financial cases it is frequently the decisive one.