Margaux Durand-Poincloux
Margaux Durand-Poincloux was internal compliance lawyer in a bank when she joined the Paris Bar.
She worked for Huc-Morel Labrousse Associés, a boutique specialized in white collar crimes, from 2015 to 2018. In 2018, she joined TNDA and was appointed counsel, as she was taking over the criminal law activity of the firm.
In 2020, she founded ABPA with David Apelbaum and Michael Bendavid.
Margaux’s aera of practice is criminal law. In particular, she developed a specific expertise in criminal law related to employment (unintentional offences, concealed work, deceptive practices, etc.), criminal responsibility of managers, financial and accounting criminal law. She also intervenes regularly in libel cases, for military staff, and in art related cases (counterfeiting, etc.).
Margaux is teaching oral expression at the Paris Bar School, and regularly publish articles in specialized press.
She has been named one of the Next Generation Partners in France in 2021 by the Legal500 ranking.
The Firm
ABPA has been created in January 2020 by three lawyers specialized in white-collar criminal defence. David Apelbaum and Michaël Bendavid previously worked in their own boutique firms, while Margaux Durand-Poincloux was counsel in a larger firm, in charge of the white-collar crime department.
In spite of their young age, the firm’s partners have been appointed as defence counsels in some prominent cases, such as the Consus case (VAT fraud on the carbon quota market), the Balardgone case (corruption and embezzlement relating to a public procurement for the new Defence Ministry building), the Brétigny-sur-Orge case (one of the most serious train accidents of recent French history), the Pugachev case (defence of a Russian oligarch at odds with Russia’s government, banking authorities and secret services), the E. P. Jacobs case (a large-scale case of misappropriation of works of art, namely original comics strips), the Bensoussan case (an international tax evasion and money laundering organization) and the Maranatha case (a bankruptcy and embezzlement case targeting one of French hotel industry’s key player), or the Petit Bar case (defence of a businessman in one of the biggest organised crime-related money laundering case in France).
Most of the firm’s clients are companies and executives who rely on the partners to defend them before criminal jurisdictions. Indeed, in a context of growing repression where individuals prosecuted for white-collar crimes are more and more at risk of imprisonment and general freezing of assets, the firm’s partners have a deep knowledge of criminal procedure which allows them to provide strong advice and an equally strong defence. The firm also advises victims of white-collar criminality (corporate crime and fraud, breach of trust, fraudulent introduction into an automated processing system, blackmail, etc.).
Moreover, the firm gives special attention to its clients’ reputation, and regularly handles cases of libel, breach to presumption of innocence, and private life violation – mostly related to pre-existing white-collar crime prosecution.
The partners defend a vast array of individuals, corporations and institutions, but they have a specific experience in the fields of finance, heavy industry, rail transportation, film and music production, contemporary art market, and hotel industry. Moreover, the firm’s partners are extremely proud to be regularly appointed by fellow lawyers, criminally prosecuted, to defend them.
