Nikolai Venn has been practicing exclusively in the field of criminal law for over 25 years. He advises companies, associations and individuals and leads defences in all areas of criminal law, in particular commercial criminal law. His areas of practice include offences against property (e.g. fraud, subsidy fraud, embezzlement), corruption and tax evasion, as well as ancillary criminal law and administrative offenses.
Publicly known cases concerned, for example, board members of several banks (BerlinHyp, SachsenLB and HSH Nordbank), including allegations of breach of trust, a minister of the state of Brandenburg for subsidy fraud, board members of public savings banks e.g.for breach of trust and tax evasion, board members of several Berlin public companies for breach of trust and corruption allegations, the VW ‘diesel affair’, consultants for ‘cum/ex’ tax trades, an auditor in the regulatory proceedings in the Wirecard complex and the representation of a listed real estate group for GDPR fines before the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Nikolai Venn has been recommended by name in the rankings of ‘JUVE - Commercial Law Firms’ and ‘The Legal 500 - Germany's Leading Law Firms’ for many years (most recently JUVE 2023/24: ‘has an eye for the essentials’, ‘clever strategist’). In September 2023, FOCUS magazine awarded him the title of "Top Lawyer" in the field of criminal law for the sixth time in a row. In the list of ‘Germany's best lawyers’ published by Handelsblatt in June 2024, Nikolai Venn is again listed for the areas of white-collar criminal law and criminal tax law. In addition, Handelsblatt honoured him as ‘Lawyer of the Year 2024’ for criminal tax law in Berlin.
Born in Germany, Constance, in 1971, he grew up in Vienna (Austria) and The Hague (Netherlands). Venn began to study law at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1990. After passing the first state law examination he worked first as a legislative assistant, then, after the second state law examination in 1998 as a lawyer for a Berlin based law office in the field of criminal law. In 2001 he became a certified specialist lawyer for criminal law (Fachanwalt für Strafrecht). In the same year Nikolai venn moved to a corporate law firm, where he was responsible for commercial criminal law. In 2008 he joined his current partners.
Between 2001 and 2011, Nikolai Venn was a pro bono lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Potsdam, whose courses included criminal procedural law, criminal business law, and the law governing criminal defence. At professional conferences and training events he is giving lectures on issues of white collar crime and the law of criminal procedures.
Nikolai Venn is a member of the advisory board of the Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsstrafrecht und Haftung im Unternehmen (ZWH) and author of various publications on substantive criminal law and criminal procedural law. A list of his publications can be found here.
Nikolai Venn is member of the Wirtschaftsstrafrechtliche Vereinigung e.V. (WiSteV), the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Strafrecht des Deutschen Anwaltvereins, the Vereinigung Berliner Strafverteidiger*innen, the Brandenburgische Kriminalpolitische Vereinigung e.V., the German-Dutch Lawyers Association (DNRV) as well as the European Criminal Bar Association (ECBA).
Nikolai Venn
Hausvogteiplatz 10
10117 Berlin
Tel: +49 30 86 87 59 0
Fax: +49 30 86 87 59 11
E-Mail: n.venn(at)ffpv.de