The recent track record of BACS Abogados‘ highly specialised white-collar crime team includes matters involving the public sector, politics, economic fraud, plagiarism, insider trading, and the armed forces. The firm fields several experienced practitioners, namely: Marcos Contreras, whose recent career includes being appointed a Professor of the Department of Criminal Sciences at Universidad de Santiago in 2021; Miguel Schürmann and Alejandro Awad, who are ‘without a doubt the best criminal litigators in the country‘; and consultant partner Antonio Bascuñán, who led the team of academics that produced the preliminary draft of Criminal Code presented to the Parliament by President Piñera. The second line of advisers includes José Pedro Silva, who is highly active in white-collar crime investigations, and was promoted to director of the firm’s criminal law and compliance practices in January 2022.

Launched in 2017, boutique legal practice López Escobar del Río fields an eight-strong team (including four partners) that routinely handles a share of Chile’s most significant criminal cases, including cases concerning finance, retail, power generation, banking, infrastructure, ports and mining. The department is jointly led by Jorge Del Río Pérez, (former Ethics Judge of the Chilean Bar Association until 2021) who has longstanding experience in arbitration, dispute resolution and ADR work; Julián López Masle, a criminal, civil and commercial litigation expert, whose track record includes leading the criminal defence of the Penta Group’s controlling shareholders in relation to alleged tax offences and bribery; José Ignacio Escobar Opazo, whose recent workload includes assisting with an investigation into both embezzlement of public funds and bribery; and Felipe Leiva Fadic, a specialist in public sector-related arbitration, dispute resolution and litigation. Senior associate Ignacio Ananías Zaror is also active in criminal litigation, and civil, administrative and criminal litigation specialist Soledad Krause Muñoz -a former partner at Gandarillas, Montt, Del Río y Krause- was hired as counsel in October 2021.

The 13-strong department at BCP Abogados specialises in highly complex litigation, defending economic crime charges, tax crimes, crimes by officials, contentious administrative cases and civil litigation. The team is also active in matters involving criminal compliance, anti-corruption, and the prevention of asset laundering and terrorist financing. The group is jointly led by complex litigation expert Juan Ignacio Piña, whose practice spans litigation involving criminal, administrative and civil liability law; Francisco Cox, whose track record includes litigating before the International Criminal Court; and criminal litigation and compliance expert Matías Balmaceda. At senior associate level, Guillermo Cantin‘s practice includes criminal litigation work. Former compliance co-director Rodrigo Aldoney left the firm in January 2022.

The white-collar crime practice at litigation boutique Gana y Galvez Abogados houses specialists in fraud committed against companies and financial institutions, as well as defence-side fraud-related allegations. The firm’s criminal litigation group is led by founding partner Jorge Gálvez S, and routinely interacts with the Police, the Public Ministry, the Guarantee Courts and the Superior Courts in relation to criminal matters. The group’s track record includes the prevention and prosecution of crimes involving the embezzlement of Chile’s financial system, as well as representing senior executives, CEOs and government officials in criminal investigations. Key associate support comes from experienced litigator Javiera Venegas L and Martín Hess.

A frequent port-of-call for law firms that don’t have a criminal practice, the ‘small but powerful and dedicated‘ white-collar group at Giroux Vial Abogados is experienced in dispute resolution involving criminal and administrative penal law, and also has a robust compliance practice that covers the criminal liability of private individuals and legal entities, as well as asset laundering prevention. Founding partners Cristophe Giroux and Salvador Vial, who are ‘very good at dealing with sensitive issues that have a high potential for conflict‘, have both worked in the public and private sectors, including public prosecution agencies. Experienced litigation associate Paulina Corral   moved to Fundación Pro Bono Chile in March 2022.

Launched as recently in 2019, Merino y Cía. Abogados‘ practice acts in major criminal cases involving embezzlement, corporate fraud, forgery, and crimes against intellectual and industrial property. It also assists corporations with their internal procedures for detecting frauds and other unlawful acts; and advises on the design, implementation and updating of compliance systems that can serve as corporate criminal liability defences. The firm’s principal figures are founding partner Eugenio Merino Palacios, a former Ortiz & Compañía partner; and of counsel Javier Wilenmann Von Bernath, whose track record includes advising the Chilean criminal justice system’s key institutions.

Launched in 2018, Montero, Silva & Valdés‘ specialised white-collar department, which ‘demonstrates a lot of experience during difficult cases‘, consistently acts in complex criminal matters as well as assisting with contingency-related preventive analyses and handling the development of compliance models and programmes. Currently a professor at the criminal law department of the Universidad Mayor, founding partner and team head Darío Silva Villagrán, who ‘stands out as an excellent criminal lawyer‘, focuses primarily on penal matters, particularly criminal activity with economic and administrative sanctioning elements, as well as compliance issues. At associate level, the deeply experienced Paula Alejandra Sánchez Birke arrived from the former Bofill Mir Andres Jana Abogados in May 2021 (where she was a senior); and Manuela Miquel Barros, ‘a very efficient litigation associate‘, also provides key associate.

Focused on advising both large and medium-sized companies, the eight-strong practice at Estudio Navarro Abogados is jointly co-led by Catalina Navarro, who previously directed the Economic Crimes Unit at the National Public Prosecutor’s Office; and Carlos Vernaza, a former Undersecretariat for Crime Prevention counsel at the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security. Partners at the firm since 2014, Navarro and Vernaza both specialise in crimes against assets and property, economic crimes, and generally all crimes involving business (including cybercrime, and intellectual and industrial property-related crime). The department also assists companies with the development of crime prevention models. Recent highlights saw the team acted for three students of a trading and investment academy, who suffered the theft of cryptocurrencies from their accounts.