Biography: Business Crime Defence

Dr Marc Henzelin is a partner of Lalive, a firm well known for its practice of international arbitration and transnational litigation, where he specialises in white-collar crime and transnational criminal law and litigation. Marc Henzelin's practice focuses on representing individuals, companies or foreign states in criminal cases or complex transnational cases which have a criminal law aspect or aspects of mutual legal assistance in criminal matters: corruption, money laundering, fraud, mismanagement of assets, criminal aspects of tax fraud, etc. He also has an extensive experience of search and recovery of assets and internal investigations, and he regularly advises clients on regulatory, compliance and disclosure aspects.

Dr Henzelin graduated from the University of Geneva in 1984 and studied at the Business School of the University of Bern (1985). He holds a Master in European Legal Studies (LLM) from the University of Exeter, UK (1993), and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Geneva (1999, summa cum laude).

Marc Henzelin has been an acting judge at the Cour de Cassation of Geneva since 2009 and was prior to that an acting judge in the criminal and commercial sections of the Geneva court of appeals (2002-2009). He is admitted to plead before the International Criminal Court.

He is an active member of numerous professional associations, including the business crime section of the International Bar Association (of which he is co-chairman since 2011); the advisory board of the European Criminal Bar Association (ECBA) since 2007; the anti-corruption commission of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC); the International Society of Criminal Law; the Swiss Society of Criminal Law, among others. Marc Henzelin is also on the editorial board of the New Journal of European Criminal Law. He has published two books and more than 30 book chapters and articles in legal journals and reviews in matters of international and economic criminal law, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters and public international law.

Since 1995, he has held various academic positions at universities in Switzerland (mainly Geneva) and abroad (Turin, Hong Kong, Paris, etc). He teaches regularly mutual legal assistance to graduates on the Master of Laws in International Crime and Justice programme which is jointly organised by the Faculty of Law at the University of Turin and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), as well as to judges, prosecutors and other professionals in the framework of various programmes of the United Nations or the Commonwealth.