“Criminal lawyer with over twenty-five years in practice. She has acted in some of the country’s most significant criminal cases.”
She has led Santana Lorenzo Abogados since founding it in 2007. White-collar crime, tax, wealth and international matters: she sets the strategy for every case and chooses the team accountable for handling it.
Margarita Santana Lorenzo has practised as a criminal litigation lawyer for over twenty-five years and has acted in some of Spain’s most significant criminal cases, representing financial institutions, telecommunications operators, airlines and energy companies, as well as senior executives and private individuals. She began her career at a leading criminal law firm, where she specialised in white-collar crime, and in 2007 she founded Santana Lorenzo Abogados on her own, one of the country’s first criminal litigation boutiques.
She began applying criminal and tax compliance in 2006, before corporate criminal liability existed in Spain, and is today one of the leading voices in the field: university lecturer in Criminal Law, contributor to the training programmes of the Madrid Bar Association, ISDE and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, founder of the standardisation committee on tax compliance (UNE 19602), director of the Thomson Reuters Tax Compliance Congress and SEPBLAC agent. She is the author and editor of several leading works on compliance published by Thomson Reuters Aranzadi, a contributor to Legal Today, Actualidad Jurídica Aranzadi and Confilegal, the author of numerous articles and a regular speaker at conferences, webinars and masterclasses. ISDE International Legal Award 2020.
Works published by Thomson Reuters Aranzadi
- Guía práctica de compliance internacional (2020). A collective work edited by Margarita Santana Lorenzo, with seventeen chapters written by compliance officers and experts from Europe, the United States and Latin America; Gran Tratado series, 1,040 pages.
- Practicum Compliance Tributario 2020 (2019). Edited together with César García Novoa and Juan Blanco Gutiérrez, with more than thirty contributors; presented at ISDE in November 2019.
- El compliance tributario en el proceso penal (2020). With Javier Martín Fernández, Jesús Rodríguez Márquez and Alejandro Luzón Cánovas: exemption from criminal and administrative liability through management systems, and expert evidence in criminal proceedings.
- La prevención de los delitos contra la Hacienda Pública y el blanqueo de capitales a través del compliance: aspectos prácticos (2018). With Javier Martín Fernández; aligned with the UNE 19601 standard.
Practice Areas
White-collar crime and compliance
Defence and prosecution for companies, executives and private individuals; compliance programmes and corporate criminal defence.
Tax
Tax audits, derived liability claims, tax fraud.
International
Structures for businesses and families, with our network of firms in Portugal, Uruguay, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Family and wealth
Divorce involving business assets and contested estates.
Teaching, publications and press
University lecturer in Criminal Law, contributor to the training programmes of the Madrid Bar Association, ISDE and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, author and editor of leading works on compliance published by Thomson Reuters Aranzadi and a regular contributor to legal and general media. The full list of interviews, articles and awards, with links to the originals, is in Press and Awards.