Vera advises German and international companies on all aspects of public and regulatory law, especially in areas relating to environmental law, product compliance, foreign trade law/trade sanctions, data protection, social security law, public duties and levies, administrative procedural law and litigation, compliance and internal investigations.
Her most recent environmental and product compliance matters include advising an international chemical company on the remediation of several, large-scale instances of soil and groundwater pollution (since 2017) and on the legal framework applicable to the use of certain chemical substances (since 2020), advising an international machine manufacturer on the regulation of products that come into contact with drinking water (since 2021), advising a middle-market building materials manufacturer on aspects of waste management and soil protection law with regard to a complex case of PFC contamination of soil and surface waters (2019) and advising an international automotive supplier on product and environmental compliance issues (2017).
In matters relating to foreign trade law, Vera has advised an energy services provider on sanctions screening (since 2021), 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), an international automotive supplier (2019) and a service provider (2020) on notification requirements under foreign trade law and the voluntary disclosure for violating such requirements as well as an international machine manufacturer on an external audit conducted under export control law by the German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (2019). Furthermore, Vera has many years of experience in investment control procedures and, most recently for instance, she advised an international supplier of laboratory products (2020), an international machine manufacturer (2020-2021), an international manufacturer of fibre-glass networks in a procedure initiated ex officio (2019) as well as an international provider of cyber security software in a sector-specific investment control procedure involving the negotiation of a security arrangement (2019/2020).
As regards data protection law, Vera has considerable expertise in advising international clients on non-European data transfers, 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, she has advised an insurance group on the validity of consent (since 2020), a debt collection service provider on the legal basis of data processing (since 2021), an insurance group on the duty to keep records and the structuring of a document management system, including data transfers to a US-based cloud services provider (since 2020), an international automotive supplier on the use of the data of a business partner (since 2020), on its duties to keep records and to erase data as well as on an approach to erasing data (2020) and a Swiss financial services provider on the applicability of the GDPR on Swiss business operations as well as on joint control (2019). In company transactions, Vera has provided assistance to 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), a credit institution on data transfers in anticipation of a merger of a subsidiary to the parent company (2020) and an investor regarding a comprehensive due diligence under data protection law, in particular on data protection relating to the product (privacy by design) in the field of automated driving (2019/2020).
Her matters in compliance and internal investigations include in particular advising a media company (since 2014), a private hospital operator (2014-2016), a provider of engineering services (2019) and an insurance group (2019-2021) on internal investigations into the social security status of a considerable number of freelancers ('false self-employment'), including proceedings conducted by public authorities and public prosecutors’ offices, and advising an international supplier of engineering services with regard to a World Bank investigation into corruption and bidding fraud in connection with a World Bank-financed construction project in Africa (2015). 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 duties, the handling of private data, the transferring of data to authorities and parties to disputes.
