Tom Bonnifay is a criminal law specialist, a certification awarded by the Conseil national des barreaux following a specialisation examination.

A partner at Vouland Avocats, he focuses mainly on the criminal defence of companies and their directors. He acts in white-collar criminal law, environmental criminal law and complex criminal procedure litigation.

Trained at the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, where he worked for a year as a legal assistant, he worked on appeals concerning in particular money laundering, unintentional offences and environmental criminal litigation. He prepared summary notes for the Court’s deliberations.

Since joining the firm in 2019, he has acted in several major criminal proceedings, including the Guedj and Apollonia cases and the trial over the rue d’Aubagne building collapses. He also assists companies, their directors and their legal departments when an accident, an investigation, an inspection or a management decision gives rise to a criminal risk.

His practice rests on one conviction: white-collar criminal law remains, above all, a criminal lawyer’s job. It combines the analysis of responsibilities within the company, command of the evidence and in-depth knowledge of criminal procedure. He is regularly approached by colleagues practising business, employment or public law to handle the criminal dimension of complex cases.

In the context of a priority question of constitutionality, he notably obtained the repeal by the Constitutional Council of a statutory provision that undermined the safeguards of criminal procedure.

Teaching and training

Tom Bonnifay teaches environmental crime at the Aix-en-Provence Faculty of Law. His teaching covers in particular the criminal liability of companies and their directors, the allocation of responsibilities within organisations and the defence of legal entities facing an environmental offence.

He also teaches on the Master 2 programme “Combating financial crime and compliance” at the Aix-en-Provence faculty, where he covers the criminal defence of companies. He also takes part in the Institut Louis Favoreu’s teaching on the methodology of the priority question of constitutionality.

He regularly trains lawyers and future lawyers at the Institut de Défense Pénale, the Criminal Law Committee of the Marseille Bar and the EDACS and EDASE bar schools.

Publications

A regular contributor to AJ Pénal and Lexbase, Tom Bonnifay has published numerous articles on white-collar criminal law, corporate criminal liability, criminal procedure and environmental crime.

Holder of a university diploma in environmental law from the Grenoble faculty, he also writes the annual environmental criminal law column for the Lexbase journal. He contributes to case law reviews, doctrinal analyses and commentaries on contemporary developments in the criminal liability of organisations.

His practice

Tom Bonnifay sees criminal law as a method: understand the organisation, identify responsibilities, test the evidence and prepare the defence even before proceedings begin.

He assists companies and their directors in preventing criminal risk, facing the first hours of an investigation and defending them before the courts, with constant attention to procedural safeguards, confidentiality and the economic and reputational consequences of each case.