Adv. Luca Santa Maria

Born in 1962, he graduated with honours in 1986 from the University of Milan, defending a thesis titled “I reati di agevolazione colposa” (Offences of Negligent Facilitation) under the supervision of Professor Giorgio Marinucci. In 1991, he qualified as a lawyer and has been enrolled in the special register of Supreme Court practitioners since 2004.

From 1986 to 1991, he served as an assistant in Criminal Law (under Prof. Giorgio Marinucci) at the Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure of the University of Milan, participating in teaching activities, examination boards, and acting as a co-supervisor for degree theses.

From January 1987 to 2001, he practised law at the firm of Prof. Avv. Federico Stella, Chair of Criminal Law at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, where he developed specialised expertise in environmental criminal law, workplace safety, and economic criminal law. At Prof. Stella’s firm, he was involved in several high-profile national cases, including representing the victims in the Stava Valley disaster trial, defending former board members in the bankruptcy case of the old Banco Ambrosiano, and advising executives of leading chemical companies prosecuted in the well-known Porto Marghera Petrochemical trial.

Over the years, he has also provided significant consultancy services for a major petroleum company, particularly on guidelines for intermediary commissions in international procurement before the introduction of the offence of international corruption in Italian law. Additionally, he has advised multinational corporations on market transparency, corporate communications, and the delegation of responsibilities concerning environmental and workplace safety compliance.

In April 2001, he founded his own law firm, offering both litigation and advisory services, primarily to corporations and multinationals, with a focus on environmental criminal law, workplace safety, economic criminal law, corporate administrative liability, and white-collar crime in general.

Thanks to his strategic vision, he has served for nearly twenty years as the trusted criminal law advisor to a multinational chemical group operating in Italy, with multiple production sites across the country. In this role, he has recently represented the group in major national environmental crime cases, including the prosecution of former executives of a leading Italian chemical company for poisoning and environmental disaster in Bussi sul Tirino (where his client was a civil party) and the Spinetta Marengo groundwater contamination case (where he defended the group’s senior management, accused alongside former executives of polluting the aquifer).

Since 2008, he has been the lead counsel for a major multinational telecommunications company, handling its most prominent legal matters. Notably, he secured the company’s full acquittal in a high-profile administrative liability case under Legislative Decree No. 231/2001 before the Milan Tribunal.

Since 2012, he has been recognised by TopLegal as a market leader in environmental, health, and industrial criminal law. In 2015, he was named Environmental Criminal Law Lawyer of the Year by Le Fonti.

A lifelong scholar of legal philosophy and criminal law, in 2010 he founded Diritto Penale Contemporaneo (now Italy’s leading online criminal law journal, with over 100,000 monthly visits, published by the Diritto Penale Contemporaneo Association, of which he is President). The platform was created as a virtual forum for legal professionals to debate contemporary criminal law issues.

Continuously seeking new challenges, he is currently exploring neuroscience and its potential implications for criminal law, particularly how empirical scientific advances over the past two decades could reshape legal doctrine. This research will form the basis of a forthcoming collaborative publication with his peers.

He is the father of Federico, Leonardo, and Lucrezia.