Vera advises German and international companies on all aspects of public and regulatory law, especially in areas relating to environmental law and product compliance, foreign trade law/trade sanctions, data protection, social security law, public duties and levies, AML compliance, administrative procedural law and litigation, compliance and internal investigations.
Her most recent environmental and product compliance matters include advising an international chemicals company on the remediation of several, large-scale instances of PFAS pollution in soil and groundwater, encompassing aspects of German waste management and landfill law, (since 2017) and on the legal framework applicable to the use of certain chemical substances (since 2020), advising an industrial company on the legal requirements for demolishing and decommissioning production facilities (since 2023), advising a hazardous goods warehouse on requirements under hazardous incident law (since 2021), advising an industrial company on concluding a long-term remediation of an instance of large-scale groundwater pollution (2021), and advising an international machine manufacturer on the regulation of products that come into contact with drinking water (2021).
In matters relating to foreign trade law, Vera is currently (since February 2022) advising several entities on the Russia sanctions, in particular on the goods- and service-related sanctions and financial sanctions, as well as on reviewing compliance processes and establishing compliance organizations and reviewing business policies, on investigations of past deliveries and on administrative proceedings. In addition, Vera has advised an asset manager (since 2021) and an energy services provider (2021) on sanctions screenings, a middle-market machine manufacturer on exports to Iran as well as on the EU Blocking Regulation and its application on US secondary sanctions imposed on Iran (2020), a financial services provider on the account closure of an Iranian customer as well as on the EU Blocking Regulation (2019), an international machine manufacturer on export control compliance and sanctions imposed on Russia (2019), and several other entities on notification requirements under foreign trade law and the voluntary disclosure for violating such requirements. Vera also has many years of experience in investment review procedures in various industries, including critical infrastructure and high-tech.
Examples of further public-law matters she has handled include advising an energy services provider on the compatibility of the amendments to the German Heating Cost Ordinance and German Metering Point Operation Act with European and constitutional law and advising a bank on know-your-customer requirements under the German Anti-Money Laundering Act.
As regards data protection law, Vera has considerable expertise in advising international clients on data protection in M&A transactions, merger control procedures and internal investigations, as well as on data protection breaches and regulatory data protection proceedings. Recently, for instance, she has advised a media group and an insurance group on information access requests from data subjects (2023), a food delivery service in relation to an official request for information regarding data erasure and international data transfers (2022), a grocery retailer on the analysis of customer data for a purpose other than that for which the data were collected (2021), an insurance group on the validity of consent, including an official request for information (2020-2021), and a debt collection service provider on the legal basis of data processing, including an official request for information (since 2021). In corporate transactions, Vera has provided assistance to a bank on the sale of a credit card portfolio and a data migration (since 2022), a consumer goods producer in the sale of a part of its business along with customer data (since 2021), an insurance group regarding the separation of data in the course of the sale of a subsidiary (2018/2019), an energy company regarding data transfers to the acquirer and to the European Commission in the context of a merger control procedure and regarding the separation of data from the parent company (2018-2020), and a credit institution on data transfers in anticipation of a merger of a subsidiary to the parent company (2020).
Her matters in compliance and internal investigations include in particular one on behalf of a globally operating industrial company into the suspected supply of products to the Russian arms industry before the 2022 Russia sanctions entered into force (since 2022) and advising an insurance group on internal investigations into the social security status of outside personnel ('false self-employment'), including proceedings conducted by state authorities and public prosecutors' offices (since 2019). In many of the internal investigations performed by Hengeler Mueller, Vera advises on intersecting aspects of data protection law, such as the permissibility of data screenings (including the use of artificial intelligence), information and disclosure duties, the handling of private data and the transferring of data to authorities and parties to disputes.
