Vânia Costa Ramos

Vânia Costa Ramos is a managing partner at Carlos Pinto de Abreu e Associados – a medium-sized law office based in Lisbon, but acting all over Portugal, which was founded by Carlos Pinto de Abreu. This office offers its clients a specialised, dedicated and personalised team service, always supervised by a senior lawyer. The team has expertise in all Criminal Law areas, ranging from classical Criminal Law to White Collar Crime and extends to Regulatory punitive proceedings and to Disciplinary Proceedings. Vânia specializes in International and European and Economic Criminal Law and is responsible for the mutual cooperation cases. Her main working languages are Portuguese, English and German, as well as Spanish and French.

Vânia Costa Ramos has experience in international cooperation cases in criminal matters and a network with experienced criminal defence lawyers in other States, in particular within the European Union. If an individual or a company is facing criminal or regulatory proceedings in Portugal, it is of high importance to contact a defence lawyer immediately.

Portuguese Law allows every person to be accompanied and represented by a lawyer. It is of utmost importance to seek advice from a criminal lawyer at the earliest possible stage, also when considering establishing a business in order to assess consider all regulatory and criminal law implications. This office has furthermore experience in providing legal representation for crime victims who wish to take an active part in the criminal proceedings in Portugal, either as assistants to the prosecution or as civil claimants. This pro-activity is very important to defend these citizens’ rights, in particular in cases of a high-degree of complexity or of a transnational nature.

Vânia Costa Ramos concluded a Masters of Criminal Law in 2008, with a thesis on “Ne bis in idem and the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice – a fundamental principle of EU law?” and has published articles on various aspects of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law (right to silence and seizure of electronic mail, among others) in Portuguese law journals and has guest-lectured in post-graduate courses in the area. In 2008 she started to lecture at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon, where she has been admitted as PhD student with the Thesis “evidence exchange in the European Union – an European theory on exclusion of evidence in criminal procedure”.

Vânia Costa Ramos has been awarded Scholarships to undertake work as guest-researcher at the Institute for Criminology and Economic Criminal Law and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany; and is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Criminal Bar Association, as well as a Member of Fair Trials International Legal Experts Advisory Panel.