The white-collar crime scene in Spain has entered a new phase. Not because major corruption or fraud cases have disappeared, but because the focus has shifted. Today, the emphasis is no longer solely on individual conduct or the media impact of a case, but on the internal structure of organizations, the technological sophistication of the crimes, the accumulated regulatory pressure, and the growing difficulty the criminal justice system faces in responding swiftly and judiciously.
This shift directly impacts the Spanish legal market. It affects law firms that have made white-collar crime, compliance, and investigations a strategic practice. It affects companies operating in regulated sectors or across multiple jurisdictions. And it also affects judges, prosecutors, and compliance bodies, who are now forced to navigate a landscape where traditional categories are beginning to show clear limitations.
With the perspectives of Baker McKenzie, Cuatrecasas, and Uría Menéndez, the diagnosis gains depth. These are not three isolated opinions, but rather three privileged market positions converging on a central idea: white-collar crime can no longer be interpreted as a series of cases, but as a stress test for the legal system and for the business organization itself.
“White collar crime is no longer just a matter of individuals, but of management systems and corporate culture,” María Massó, Baker McKenzie
The fundamental shift: from individual crime to corporate risk
The first question is not which crime is at the center today, but what has actually changed in the way we understand the phenomenon. Here, a relevant difference in nuance emerges among the firms: some emphasize the shift in behavior; others, the change in focus towards the legal entity and its internal response.
From Baker McKenzie, María Massó, partner in Criminal, Compliance, and Investigations, attributes the shift to the increasing complexity of the economic crime landscape. She recalls that for years attention was focused on “institutional corruption, crimes related to public procurement, or the illicit financing of political parties,” but maintains that the landscape “has become more complex and diversified.” The decisive factor, in her analysis, is that today there is particular concern about “accounting fraud, corporate crimes, money laundering, corruption in the private and public sectors, and sophisticated tax crimes,” often with “a clear transnational dimension.” She adds the idea that best summarizes the new scope of the problem: “White collar crime is no longer just a matter of individuals, but of management systems and corporate culture.”
This diagnosis aligns with the analysis by Cuatrecasas, although Joaquín Burkhalter, coordinating partner of the Criminal Litigation, Compliance, and Investigations group, frames the evolution from a perspective more closely tied to economic and institutional cycles. In his analysis, the last decade was marked by the criminal consequences of the financial crisis—bank restructuring, IPOs, capital increases, and transactions that concealed critical financial situations. This cycle, he says, “has effectively ended.” In its place, another scenario is emerging: “more fragmented, more technological, more international, and, in many ways, more difficult to investigate and prosecute using traditional procedural tools.” Burkhalter identifies the following as current challenges: public and private corruption at both the domestic and international levels, cybercrimes with economic dimensions, crypto assets, fraud involving European grants and funds, and the early stages of so-called green-collar crime. His warning is significant: the system is no longer facing a set of causes inherited from a specific crisis, but rather a mutating form of criminality.
Uría Menéndez, for its part, introduces a different perspective that elevates the analysis. Patricia Leandro, a councilor specializing in business criminal law and internal investigations, downplays the idea that there has been a radical transformation of behaviors—”the profile of economic crime has not undergone major changes in the last decade, beyond greater technological sophistication in certain cases”—but locates the real shift elsewhere: “the progressive consolidation of the regime of criminal liability for legal entities.” This is where the logic of scrutiny changes. It is no longer enough to simply determine individual responsibility. The “corporate culture itself and the effectiveness of internal control mechanisms” are also examined. Along these lines, Leandro emphasizes an aspect that is especially relevant for the market: the criminal implications of the entity’s ex post facto conduct. In other words, in a procedure, both the fact itself and the way the organization reacts when the fact comes to light are important.
“We have moved from a period dominated by a specific crisis to a more dispersed, more technological and more difficult to judge scenario,” Joaquín Burkhalter, Cuatrecasas
Compliance: the difference between a management tool and a defensive role
If the focus shifted to corporate criminal liability, compliance had to become the primary prevention tool. The market question is whether it has succeeded. The three answers rule out complacent interpretations.
María Massó presents an “ambiguous” assessment. She acknowledges clear progress: “No one disputes that compliance is here to stay” and that it “has raised the level of internal awareness in many organizations.” However, her criticism is direct. There are still “a significant number of programs that are excessively formal or defensive, conceived more as a shield against a potential criminal investigation than as a genuine risk management tool.” In her approach, there is a dividing line that is now beyond doubt: “The key today is not so much in ‘having’ a compliance program, but in how it is designed, implemented, and lived within the company.” And that verb—lived—is not rhetorical; it refers to operational integration, a consistent tone from management, and a real capacity to modify behaviors.
Joaquín Burkhalter agrees with the overall assessment, but introduces a structural distinction particularly useful for understanding the Spanish market. In large companies and regulated sectors, he observes programs with “a real level of maturity,” with resources, operational channels, training, and a compliance function endowed with “effective authority and independence.” In contrast, in medium-sized and small businesses—“the backbone of the Spanish business fabric”—the situation is different. There, models proliferate “designed not so much to effectively prevent illegal conduct, but rather to pass an audit, satisfy a contractual requirement, or have a defensive tool at hand.” His most forceful statement gets to the heart of the problem: “Formal compliance without real substance not only fails to prevent anything, but can also generate a false sense of security that exacerbates the problem.”
Patricia Leandro chooses to emphasize the functional aspect of change. Where compliance “is taken seriously,” she argues, the programs “are yielding tangible results.” She doesn’t speak of compliance as a mere layer of documentation, but as an integral part of management. She even attributes to compliance a broader cultural function: helping to dismantle “the widespread, but unfounded, myth that regulatory compliance and business development are incompatible or conflicting objectives.”
What’s relevant for the Spanish legal sector isn’t just that there’s now a body of case law that’s beginning to distinguish between effective programs and those that are merely for show. What’s truly relevant is that this jurisprudential refinement is altering the demand for legal advice. The market no longer rewards only formal implementation. It’s starting to demand design, governance, traceability, and the capacity for future defense. In other words, compliance is ceasing to be a product and becoming a critical infrastructure.
Internal investigations: the criminal lawyer stops reaching the end
Few areas illustrate the changing legal landscape better than internal investigations. There, the criminal defense attorney no longer intervenes only when the case is already in court. They get involved earlier, at the moment of detection, and this completely alters their role.
Massó puts it clearly: internal investigations “have profoundly transformed the role of the criminal lawyer, who today must combine legal, strategic, and almost forensic skills.” It is no longer “just about defending in court, but about anticipating criminal risk, managing evidence, interviewing witnesses, interacting with compliance bodies, and, sometimes, with national or foreign authorities.” Baker McKenzie also focuses on the areas of legal friction that remain open in Spain: “the delimitation of professional secrecy, the subsequent use of the documentation obtained, the protection of personal data, the labor rights of employees under investigation, and the procedural validity of the actions taken.” Their conclusion points to a lack of a system: “There is still a certain degree of legal uncertainty, since our legislation does not specifically regulate internal investigations.”
Cuatrecasas takes this idea a step further. Burkhalter describes a real expansion of the scope of action: “Before, the criminal lawyer’s intervention came when the case was already in court. Today, we are called in the moment the company detects an irregularity.” From there, he identifies three particularly sensitive areas: the privilege of legal counsel, the rights of employees under investigation, and the relationship with the authorities. But where his analysis gains the most editorial weight is in his critique of the incentive design of the Spanish system. Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom, or France, he points out, Spain lacks mechanisms equivalent to DPAs, NPAs, or CJIPs that provide predictability for companies that investigate and cooperate. The result, in his view, is dysfunctional: “This uncertainty discourages precisely the behaviors that the system should promote.” This is not just a technical observation; it is a challenge to criminal policy.
Uría Menéndez, meanwhile, reinforces the idea of necessity. Leandro states that the criminal lawyer’s advice “is not an option, but a necessity,” precisely because they are best positioned to provide guidance on “the procedural safeguards that must be observed throughout the investigation” and on the potential effects of that investigation on any eventual criminal proceedings. The main challenge, he adds, lies in “achieving a delicate balance” between the demands of compliance and “safeguarding the entity’s right to defense,” while also respecting the fundamental rights of those affected.
What these three readings show the market is that internal investigations are no longer an appendage of compliance or a reactive measure. They are a central area of legal sophistication, one of the points where the practice of white-collar crime in Spain is most clearly being reshaped.
“It is no longer just about clarifying individual responsibility, but about examining the company culture itself,” Patricia Leandro, Uría Menéndez
The system’s major weakness: lengthy processes, eroded defenses, reduced effectiveness
If there is one point of complete agreement, it is in the criticism of the length of economic criminal proceedings. Here, there is no doctrinal disagreement between firms, but rather a shared diagnosis of institutional inadequacy.
Massó defines the excessive length of proceedings as “one of the major structural problems of economic criminal law in Spain.” From the defense’s perspective, he explains, these delays “generate serious legal uncertainty, affect the presumption of innocence, and entail an enormous personal, reputational, and economic cost for defendants and companies.” But he adds a second, equally important dimension: from a systemic point of view, “excessively long proceedings weaken the deterrent effect of criminal law.” In a single sentence, he summarizes one of the biggest flaws of the model: time ends up functioning as a factor of injustice.
Burkhalter shares this diagnosis and formulates it in terms that are particularly clear to any market participant. He speaks of “one of the most serious structural problems in our criminal justice system” and describes how the protracted nature of cases generates “an ever-increasing asymmetry between prosecution and defense.” The parallel trial, reputational damage, and delays in response erode the presumption of innocence in practice. Furthermore, he emphasizes the decline in the quality of evidence: “Witnesses forget or die, and reconstructing the events becomes artificially complex.” To correct this, he points to three key areas: judicial specialization, more resources for specialized prosecutors’ offices, and more developed mechanisms for early termination of proceedings.
Leandro makes an observation that resonates with the experience of courtroom proceedings: the time limits for preliminary investigations “have become a mere bureaucratic formality,” because “they are frequently extended indefinitely, without any real acceleration of the process.” The criticism is simple, yet devastating: the procedural reform has not altered the substantive outcome.
What’s coming: technology, international cooperation and a new cultural demand
The map’s closure doesn’t point to a single threat, but rather to a convergence of factors. This accumulation is, in fact, what makes the new environment more challenging.
Massó maintains that “the greatest challenge will undoubtedly be the combination of all these factors.” He places technology at the center—“cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, digitized financial crimes”—both as a tool for committing and investigating these crimes. He adds to this an “increasingly complex and demanding” financial regulation and more intense international cooperation. However, he reserves the most strategic idea for last: “the great challenge will be cultural,” that is, moving toward a model where white-collar crime is addressed “not only through sanctions, but also through real prevention, business ethics, and the effective accountability of decision-making bodies.”
Burkhalter organizes these same vectors according to a logic of accumulated pressure. First, technology in its “broadest dimension,” with artificial intelligence, digital assets, the metaverse, and decentralized financial infrastructures generating typologies that the system does not yet fully understand. Second, international cooperation, because economic crimes “are inherently cross-border,” while the judicial response remains “predominantly national.” Third, the avalanche of regulations on money laundering, corporate sustainability, international sanctions, whistleblower protection, and financial markets. In his view, the challenge for companies and law firms is to anticipate the convergence between administrative sanctions law and economic criminal law.
Leandro, in turn, focuses on the technical knowledge gap within the system. He warns that “understanding the dynamics of certain crimes now requires a minimum level of technological expertise from law enforcement authorities, which they often still lack.” He adds that the emergence of artificial intelligence has provided criminals with “tools of unprecedented capacity and sophistication.” The example he chooses—cyber fraud—is not accidental: it aptly illustrates how the scale and complexity of certain behaviors grow faster than the capacity for detection and prosecution.
What emerges from the three conversations is not only an evolution of economic crime, but also a shift in where decisions are made about how to handle it. Part of that decision no longer lies with the court, but with the organization itself: in how it identifies risks, how it conducts internal investigations, and how it formulates its defense before the conflict goes to court.
Meanwhile, the criminal justice system continues to operate with timelines, incentives, and tools that don’t always correspond to the technical complexity and transnational dimension of current cases. This friction—between an accelerating phenomenon and a system that is moving more slowly—permeates all the responses.
In that intermediate space, where compliance, internal investigations, procedural strategy, and regulatory pressure converge, the practice of white-collar crime in Spain is being redefined. And it is there that white-collar crime ceases to be merely a legal category and becomes a problem of organization, of systems, and ultimately, of adaptability.
