Private clients
Private clients
Laamrani Law Firm assists and defends accused persons before the criminal courts of Morocco and France, and before the courts of the Gulf states, in particular those of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. We step in from the first hours of the proceedings, whether police custody or a summons from the judicial police, and remain until every avenue of appeal has been exhausted.
Our practice has been built on cases with an international dimension: prosecutions brought in several states at once, letters rogatory, international arrest warrants, extradition requests. Maître Abdelatif Laamrani's admission to the Bars of Casablanca, Paris and Montreal allows a single, coherent defence where the case itself crosses borders.
In Morocco, we assist our clients at every stage: police custody, presentation to the public prosecutor, judicial investigation, hearings before the courts of first instance and the criminal chambers of the courts of appeal, then appeal to the Court of Cassation. We argue for release pending trial, procedural nullities, reclassification of the charges and, where appropriate, adjustment of the sentence.
In France, we appear before the investigating judge and the investigating chamber, the criminal court (tribunal correctionnel), the departmental criminal court and the assize court, including in cases handled by the specialised interregional courts (JIRS) and the national court for organised crime. Pre-trial detention, judicial supervision, applications for nullity, criminal seizures: every step of the procedure is contested.
The same team follows the case on both shores of the Mediterranean. This is decisive when evidence has been gathered in one country to be used in the other, because the lawfulness of mutual legal assistance then becomes a ground of defence in its own right.
We have assisted several persons prosecuted for international drug trafficking, in Morocco and in France. These are heavy, technical cases, and the penalties are among the most severe in criminal law.
The defence is fought first on procedure: lawfulness of telephone interceptions, geolocation, controlled deliveries and undercover operations, use of encrypted messaging data, validity of acts carried out abroad and added to the file. It is then fought on the merits: the actual role of each person, the challenge to the organised-gang aggravating circumstance, the distinction between the principal, the accomplice and the person who merely happened to be there.
We also handle the asset side that almost always accompanies these prosecutions: seizure of accounts, real estate and vehicles, confiscation, customs fines, and the defence of relatives whose property has been seized although they are not themselves accused.
We have assisted several individuals and companies facing prosecution for, or mere suspicion of, money laundering. In Morocco the matter is governed by Law No. 43-05 on combating money laundering, and a report filed by a bank with the National Financial Intelligence Authority is often the starting point of the investigation.
Maître Laamrani was a banker before becoming a lawyer, and is the author of Droit bancaire marocain (LexisNexis). We therefore read a statement, a chain of transfers or a corporate structure as financial investigators read them. This allows us to trace and document the lawful origin of the funds, and to show that the predicate offence, without which there is no laundering, has not been established.
We act upstream, as soon as an account is frozen or a summons is received, to prevent suspicion from becoming prosecution. We act downstream, before the investigating judge and the trial court, to have seizures lifted and assets returned.
We defend executives, company officers, managers and companies across the whole field of business criminal law: misuse of corporate assets, breach of trust, fraud, forgery and use of forged documents, corruption and influence peddling, fraudulent bankruptcy, dishonoured cheques, and securities, tax, customs and foreign-exchange offences.
A criminal accusation does not strike the executive alone. It affects the company's credit, its banking relationships and its markets. We therefore build the defence with the discretion the situation requires, taking into account the civil, commercial or tax proceedings running in parallel.
We also assist victims, including banks, insurance companies and corporations, by filing complaints, joining proceedings as civil party and recovering misappropriated sums.
Extradition holds a particular place in our practice. We have assisted several persons whose surrender was requested from the Moroccan authorities by foreign authorities, before the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation (formerly the Supreme Court), which in Morocco is the court competent to examine such requests.
The procedure follows rules of its own. The requested person is usually arrested on the basis of an Interpol red notice or a request for provisional arrest, then held in custody pending the formal request of the requesting state. The Court of Cassation then issues an opinion: if it is unfavourable, it binds the government and extradition cannot be granted.
The grounds of defence are many and must be raised in time: primacy of the applicable bilateral treaty over domestic law, dual criminality, limitation, the political nature of the offence or of the request, Moroccan nationality of the requested person, the rule of speciality, risk of violation of fundamental rights in the requesting state, formal defects in the request and its supporting documents. We also apply for release while the request is being examined and, where justified, petition the Commission for the Control of Interpol's Files to have the notice deleted.
Among these cases, we assisted a senior leader of a Lebanese political organisation whose extradition was sought by the United States of America. Although the surrender ultimately took place, our work on the lawfulness of the procedure led to its being invalidated on formal grounds, and he was in the end released by the United States courts on a procedural defect.
This case illustrates our method: an extradition defence does not stop at the border. We prepare it together with counsel in the requesting state, so that the irregularities identified in Morocco continue to serve the person once surrendered.
We also assist persons prosecuted before the criminal courts of the Gulf states, notably those of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The United Arab Emirates have become a place where international financial investigations, extradition requests and commercial disputes with a criminal dimension intersect.
Proceedings there are conducted in Arabic, before the public prosecution and then before the courts of first instance, appeal and cassation of each emirate. Maître Laamrani works and pleads in Arabic, and we act alongside Emirati counsel admitted before those courts, which gives the client a single point of contact who understands his case, his language and his home legal system.
We deal in particular with dishonoured cheques and prosecutions arising from commercial disputes, breach of trust and fraud, money laundering, travel bans and passport retention, and extradition and mutual assistance requests addressed to or issued by the Emirates, notably in their relations with Morocco and France.
For Moroccan and French nationals settled in the Gulf, and for their families at home, we provide the link between the three systems: visiting and following the detained person, coordinating the local defence, consular steps, and handling the consequences of the proceedings in Morocco or France.
The firm in figures
Most of the market's leading banks and insurance companies, and more than 200 businesses advised on business law matters.
For any inquiry, call us during office hours on +212 (0) 522-448-273.
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