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Dr Marcelle Janina Gatter was awarded the 2017 Südwestmetall-Förderpreis in Stuttgart. The lawyer was recognised for her thesis on internal corporate investigations, which she wrote at the University of Konstanz. The ceremony was held in the presence of Südwestmetall deputy chairman Reiner Thede and Ministerialdirektor Ulrich Steinbach, representing Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Science, Research and the Arts, Theresia Bauer. Gatter is one of nine junior researchers from Baden-Württemberg who were awarded this year’s Südwestmetall-Förderpreis at an awards ceremony held in Stuttgart.

The award seeks to recognise and promote outstanding achievements by junior researchers at Baden-Württemberg’s nine state universities that are likely to be of relevance to the industrial workspace or its socio-political framework. The award carries a total cash prize of 5,000 euros.

Marcelle Janina Gatter’s thesis, which has already been published as a book, is sure to “garner significant attention from stakeholders in science and business”, writes Professor Hans Theile, professor of criminal law, criminal proceedings, commercial criminal law and criminology at the University of Konstanz, who supervised her thesis. Gatter’s study, “Die Ausgestaltung von Mitarbeiterbefragungen bei unternehmensinternen Ermittlungen und die Selbstbelastungsfreiheit – Eine rechtstheoretische und rechtsdogmatische Untersuchung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Belehrungen”, deals with internal corporate investigations known to be conducted by US businesses.

As German businesses find themselves under increasing scrutiny from American law enforcement agencies, these internal investigations acquire more relevance. German authorities experiencing dwindling resources are also “developing a liking for the instrument of internal corporate investigation”, says Gatter.

For instance, if the American exchange supervisory authority receives an accusation of bribery in connection with a particular business, standard procedure is to examine the allegations carefully. However, instead of doing this themselves, as German authorities would, this task is then delegated to the business in question, which has to appoint and pay for a lawyer or law firm. The business is then vetted thoroughly. For employees of the business under scrutiny, these internal corporate investigations can prove dangerous. Under German law, employees are obliged to provide any information about their employment requested by the investigating authority, even if this entails self-incrimination.

In this case, they run the danger not only of being fired, but of incurring criminal charges as soon as the results of the investigation have been passed on to the prosecuting authorities. According to prevalent legal opinion, the concept of “Selbstbelastungsfreiheit” (freedom from self-incrimination) does not apply here. Gatter, who is currently working as a legal intern at the Landgericht Stuttgart, combines both theoretical and practical aspects of current legal thought to develop a solution to this conflict of interest between businesses, employees and prosecuting authorities. She concludes that the right to remain silent depends to a large extent on a case-by-case assessment of the interests at stake. And in some cases, evidence may even be inadmissible in criminal proceedings.