White-Collar Crime in Germany: How Companies and Executives Are Investigated, Sanctioned and Defended

At a glance: White-collar crime in Germany covers financially motivated, non-violent offences with a direct nexus to economic activity — chiefly fraud (§ 263 StGB), breach of trust (§ 266 StGB), tax evasion (§ 370 AO), money laundering (§ 261 StGB) and corruption. Germany has no general corporate criminal liability: a company itself cannot commit a crime, but it can be fined under § 30 of the Administrative Offences Act (Ordnungswidrigkeitengesetz, OWiG) — currently up to €10 million for intentional offences — and stripped of proceeds through uncapped confiscation under §§ 73 ff. StGB. Two 2026 reforms raise the § 30 OWiG fine ceiling to €40 million. For an executive or company under suspicion, the decisive variables are set early in the investigation: access to the file, the right to silence, and disciplined control of dawn raids and internal investigations.

White-collar criminal proceedings in Germany sit at the intersection of three bodies of law that an international company rarely encounters together at home: substantive criminal law in the Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB), the regulatory-fine regime of the OWiG, and a confiscation system that can reach economic advantages the company never treated as illicit. For a US or UK general counsel used to deferred prosecution agreements and corporate criminal liability, the German structure is counterintuitive — and the points of leverage are different. This guide maps how white-collar crime is prosecuted, sanctioned and defended in Germany, written from the defense perspective, covering the individual offences and the procedural settings in which they are investigated and defended.

What counts as white-collar crime in Germany?

White-collar crime in Germany is not a single statutory offence but an umbrella for economic offences set out across the Criminal Code and ancillary statutes. The core property offences are fraud (§ 263 StGB) and breach of trust, or Untreue (§ 266 StGB); around them cluster tax evasion (§ 370 of the Fiscal Code, Abgabenordnung/AO), money laundering (§ 261 StGB), corruption offences, the withholding of social-security contributions (§ 266a StGB), insolvency offences including delayed filing (§ 15a of the Insolvency Code, InsO), and capital-markets offences such as insider dealing and market manipulation. The persons typically under suspicion are managing directors, management-board and supervisory-board members, authorised officers and senior employees — precisely because conduct relevant under economic criminal law is often embedded in ordinary operational routines.

The breadth matters for defense strategy. Prosecutors frequently charge several offences in the alternative around the same facts — a single acquisition can be framed as breach of trust, fraud and a tax offence at once. Narrowing that frame is often the first substantive task of the defense.

How does corporate criminal liability work in Germany?

Germany has no general corporate criminal liability: under the prevailing view, a legal entity is neither capable of acting nor culpable in the criminal-law sense, so a company cannot itself be convicted of a crime. Instead, a company is sanctioned indirectly. Under § 30 OWiG, a regulatory fine may be imposed on the entity where a person in a managerial position has committed a criminal or regulatory offence by which corporate duties were violated, or through which the company was enriched or was intended to be enriched. Where the offence is committed by ordinary employees, the company is exposed under §§ 30 and 130 OWiG only if managers failed to take appropriate supervisory measures — the breach-of-supervisory-duty route under § 130 OWiG.

The current ceiling of the punitive component under § 30 OWiG is €10 million for an intentional offence and €5 million for a negligent one. That figure is widely misreported in English-language sources as the limit of corporate exposure. It is not. Prosecutors routinely combine the fine with confiscation of proceeds (Einziehung von Taterträgen, §§ 73 ff. StGB / § 29a OWiG) — a separate, uncapped mechanism — so the economically decisive number is often the confiscation order, not the fine.

The 2026 reforms: corporate fines rise to €40 million

Two separate 2026 legislative tracks raise the § 30 OWiG fine ceiling from €10 million to €40 million, and companies operating in Germany should plan against the higher figure. The first track is already law: on 15 January 2026 the Bundestag passed an act adjusting Germany’s criminal sanctions law (Bundestags-Drucksache 21/2508), implementing Directive (EU) 2024/1226, which raises the § 30 OWiG cap to €40 million for sanctions-related predicate offences and corresponding supervisory-duty breaches.

The second track is broader and still in the legislative process. On 29 April 2026 the Federal Cabinet adopted a government bill implementing the EU Environmental Crime Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1203). Although the vehicle is environmental, the bill revises § 30 OWiG as a whole: the higher caps of €40 million (intentional) and €20 million (negligent) would apply across all offences for which a company can be fined — fraud, corruption, money laundering, sanctions and beyond. The bill also codifies, for the first time in German law, statutory criteria for assessing corporate fines, expressly including a company’s contribution to uncovering wrongdoing, its reparation and its improvement of compliance controls.

The practical significance of the assessment criteria is easy to underestimate next to the headline number. Once a company’s self-investigation and remediation become express statutory factors, the quality and credibility of an internal investigation move from soft mitigation to a codified determinant of the fine — and a defensive, conflicted or incomplete investigation becomes a quantifiable liability.

How are white-collar cases prosecuted in Germany?

White-collar cases in Germany are prosecuted by the public prosecutor’s office (Staatsanwaltschaft), often through specialised economic-crime units, and tried before specialised business-crime divisions of the regional courts (Landgerichte). Jurisdiction follows the sentence at stake: the Landgericht has first-instance jurisdiction where a custodial sentence of more than four years is realistically possible, the Amtsgericht (local court) otherwise; state-security matters go to the higher regional courts (Oberlandesgerichte). A judgment of the Landgericht can be challenged on points of law by way of revision to the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) — there is no full factual re-hearing at that level.

Unlike the United States, Germany has no sentencing guidelines. The sentence must reflect the defendant’s degree of culpability under § 46 StGB, with the court weighing aggravating and mitigating factors within the statutory range. In white-collar cases, the length of proceedings — typically far longer than average — is itself a recognised mitigating factor, which has tactical consequences for how a defense manages time.

Investigative measures are coercive and can be economically far-reaching well before any trial: searches and seizures, asset freezing (Vermögensarrest), arrest warrants and pre-trial detention. Asset freezing and confiscation under §§ 73 ff. StGB generally require a court order, but where there is imminent danger, temporary action without prior approval is permitted — which is why early seizures often precede any charge.

Typical investigation scenarios

The most common entry points into a German white-collar investigation are the dawn raid, the witness or suspect summons, and the spillover from a regulatory or tax audit. A dawn raid (Durchsuchung) is the scenario in which the most damage is done in the shortest time: documents and devices are seized, employees are approached for spontaneous statements, and the scope of the search is defined by a warrant that is often broader than the underlying suspicion justifies. Whether the search is conducted within or beyond the limits of the warrant is frequently the first contested issue — and a successful challenge to the scope can affect the usability of seized material.

A second recurring scenario is the parallel proceeding: a German investigation running alongside a US Department of Justice or SEC matter, or an internal investigation commissioned by a parent company. Here the risks multiply — statements made for one forum can surface in another, and the German right to silence interacts awkwardly with US-style cooperation expectations. Coordinating the German defense with the cross-border posture is its own discipline.

A third is the audit spillover, where a tax audit (Betriebsprüfung) or a regulatory inspection escalates into a criminal tax investigation under § 370 AO. The transition point — when an audit becomes an investigation — triggers different rights and different risks, and recognising it early is decisive.

Defense strategies in German white-collar proceedings

The decisive defense leverage in a German white-collar case is exercised in the investigation phase, before any charge is filed — principally through control of information and disciplined use of procedural rights. The single most important rule for a suspect is that no statement on the substance should be made before defense counsel has obtained access to the investigation file (Akteneinsicht). Silence is not an admission; under German criminal procedure it is a core defensive instrument, and an executive who declines to answer — including in informal or apparently harmless exchanges — gives nothing away.

From the file, the defense tests the foundations of the allegation. For an Untreue (§ 266 StGB) case, the questions are whether a legally relevant duty to safeguard assets (Vermögensbetreuungspflicht) existed at all, whether the alleged breach is concretely described, and whether a measurable financial detriment (Vermögensnachteil) actually arose. The Federal Court of Justice has held — in a decision of 3 July 2024 (BGH 2 StR 453/23) — that in kickback arrangements a financial detriment generally lies close to hand, because the sum the contracting partner expends could also have been granted as a price reduction; the defense response turns on showing that the payments were not factored in at the principal’s expense. The corresponding analysis differs for each offence and turns on the specific statutory elements at stake.

Three further levers recur across white-collar matters. The first is challenging the scope and execution of searches and seizures, including the usability of material obtained beyond the warrant. The second is engaging confiscation early: because the gross principle means proceeds are skimmed without deducting costs, and because confiscation can attach even after the underlying offence is time-barred (§ 76a StGB), the confiscation track often deserves more attention than the headline charge. The third is steering any internal investigation so that it neither manufactures evidence against the company’s own people nor forfeits the mitigation that a credible, independent investigation can secure — a calculus that the 2026 codification of assessment criteria makes sharper still.

What to do when an investigation begins

When a dawn raid or summons signals that an investigation has begun, the immediate priorities are to secure legal representation, to say nothing on the substance, and to preserve rather than destroy potentially relevant material. During a search, the company and its employees should remain cooperative on formalities but make no statements on the matter and refer questions to counsel; spontaneous remarks, even in passing, can become evidence. Destroying or altering documents once an investigation is foreseeable creates fresh criminal exposure and should never be a response to a raid.

In parallel, the company should map its exposure across the two levels that German law keeps separate: the individual level (the executives or employees under suspicion) and the corporate level (the § 30 OWiG fine, the § 130 OWiG supervisory-duty allegation, and any confiscation). These levels can pull in different directions — a strategy that protects an individual may increase corporate exposure, and vice versa — which is why the defense architecture is set deliberately and early rather than reactively.

For an international company, two further steps are specific to the cross-border setting: aligning the German defense with any parallel US or other foreign proceeding before positions harden, and clarifying who controls privilege and disclosure across jurisdictions, given that German and US concepts of legal privilege do not map onto each other.

Where this sits

White-collar criminal law in Germany rewards early, structural decisions over reactive ones: the company that has mapped its exposure across the individual and corporate levels, understood that the confiscation order may outweigh the fine, and exercised the right to silence with discipline is in a materially different position from one that has not. The 2026 reforms — quadrupled fine ceilings and, for the first time, codified assessment criteria that reward a credible internal investigation — raise the stakes of getting that architecture right from the first day of an investigation. Each of the individual offences and procedural settings outlined here is governed by its own statutory elements and case law, which determine where the points of defense leverage lie.