The Trial
Josef K. was arrested one morning, though he had done nothing wrong. So begins Kafka’s The Trial—and so begins the experience of many entrepreneurs in Poland.
Not literally, of course. No one arrives at dawn. There is no dramatic detention. There is something worse: a letter informing you that you are a suspect. That proceedings have been initiated. That you are to appear. That the world you knew yesterday is over—and another has begun, governed by rules you do not understand.
Kafka was not writing about the justice system of his time. He was writing about any system too complex to comprehend and too powerful to resist. About the experience of a man who knows he is accused but does not know exactly of what, does not know by whom, does not know by what rules he will be judged.
This is the experience of the white-collar suspect in Poland in 2025.
The Sociology of Suspicion
There is something they do not teach in law school: that a criminal charge is a social fact before it becomes a legal one.
The moment you become a suspect, a mechanism activates that sociologists call status degradation. You need not be convicted. You need not even be formally indicted. Suspicion alone changes how others see you—and how you see yourself.
Business partners begin to keep their distance. Banks ask additional questions. Associates stop returning calls. Employees whisper. The media—if the case is large enough—publishes your name with the qualifier “suspected of.”
Garfinkel described the degradation ceremony: a ritual in which a person’s public identity is destroyed and replaced with a new, diminished one. A criminal accusation is such a ceremony—even if it never ends in a verdict.
Kafka knew this intuitively. Josef K. was not convicted. He was destroyed by the trial itself.
The Anatomy of the White Collar
Who is the white collar?
The term comes from Edwin Sutherland, the American criminologist who in 1939 observed something that seems obvious now but was not obvious then: that crimes are committed not only by the poor but also by the wealthy. That there exists a category of offenses requiring access to power, specialized knowledge, social position.
Sutherland defined white-collar crime as an offense committed by a person of high social status, in the course of their professional activity. Without physical violence. Through the exploitation of trust, information, systems.
In Poland today, this category encompasses hundreds of provisions. The Penal Code. The Fiscal Penal Code. The Financial Instruments Trading Act. Bankruptcy law. Banking law. The Public Offering Act. The Anti-Money Laundering Act.
A manager who makes a business decision moves through a minefield in which every step may later be classified as a crime—mismanagement, breach of trust, causing damage, fraud, money laundering.
Not because they intended to commit a crime. Because the definitions are broad enough to encompass almost anything.
The Psychology of the Accused
There is a psychological phenomenon that affects nearly every accused person: a sense of unreality.
For years you built a company, made decisions, employed people, paid taxes. You were an employer, an entrepreneur, a member of the community. And now someone tells you that you were a criminal. That what you considered normal business activity was in fact a series of prohibited acts.
The mind defends itself against this redefinition. The first reactions are usually denial—this is impossible, this is a mistake, this will be cleared up. Then comes anger—at the system, at the prosecution, at the injustice. Then depression—the feeling that all is lost. And only then—if at all—acceptance of the situation and the capacity for rational action.
Kübler-Ross described these stages in the context of grief. But a criminal accusation is a form of grief—grief for the identity you have lost, for the life that has ended, for the future that was supposed to look different.
The problem is that rational action is needed from day one. And on day one, you are least capable of it.
Kafka Was Right
There is a moment in The Trial that most readers remember: Josef K. tries to understand what he is accused of. No one tells him clearly. Every official refers him to another. Rules exist, but they are unwritten. Understanding the system from within is impossible.
This is not literary exaggeration. It is a description of the mechanism familiar to every defense attorney in economic criminal cases.
The charge reads: “causing significant property damage in commercial dealings, through abuse of granted powers and failure to fulfill incumbent duties.” What does this mean? Which powers? Which duties? What was permitted, and what was not?
The answer is not in the charge. It is—theoretically—in the justification. But the justification runs to a hundred pages, cites dozens of provisions, references documents you saw five years ago. To understand it, you need weeks. You have fourteen days to respond.
Kafka did not invent this world. He described it.
The Prosecution Industry
There is an aspect of white-collar crime rarely discussed: that the prosecution of economic offenses is an industry.
The prosecutor’s office has statistics to fill. It has directives mandating severe treatment of economic crimes. It has budgets dependent on “efficiency.” It has people building careers on high-profile cases.
This is not a cynical observation. It is a structural fact. The prosecution system has its own interests—and those interests are not always identical to justice.
In 2021, the number of proceedings in economic crime cases rose 22% compared to the previous year. Not because Poles suddenly became more corrupt. Because prosecuting white-collar crime became a political priority—and political priority translates into numbers.
When you are the object of that priority, your case ceases to be about whether you committed a crime. It becomes about statistics, careers, politics. Justice is a byproduct—if that.
Defense as the Restoration of Meaning
Kafka gives his hero no defender—or if he does, one who is part of the system, not its adversary. This is the blackest vision: that there is no one on your side.
Reality can be different.
Professional defense in an economic criminal case is not merely knowledge of the law. It is above all the restoration of meaning. Naming what is happening. Explaining rules that seem unknowable. Translating a language that sounds foreign.
This is a function that is insufficiently appreciated. An accused who understands their situation can act. An accused who does not is paralyzed—like Josef K., wandering between offices, seeking an answer no one will give.
Defense is also strategy. Knowing when to speak and when to stay silent. When to cooperate and when to resist. When to seek settlement and when to fight to the end. Every case is different—but every case requires a plan.
And defense is presence. Someone standing beside you in the interrogation room. Someone reading the files before you see them. Someone speaking to the prosecutor in their language, equalizing at least somewhat the asymmetry built into the system.
What We Do
We represent entrepreneurs, managers, and board members in economic criminal cases. From the first summons, through the investigative phase, to trial in all instances.
We analyze evidentiary material—not to accept the prosecution’s narrative, but to understand it and challenge it.
We build defense strategy grounded in knowledge of the law, but also in knowledge of the system—its logic, its weaknesses, its actual rules.
We prepare clients for interrogations. For trials. For confrontation with a system that seems impenetrable.
We represent in cases involving fraud, mismanagement, money laundering, tax and fiscal crimes, financial manipulation, capital market offenses.
We work for people who one morning learned they were suspects—though they had done nothing wrong. And for those who did something the system calls wrong—but who deserve a defense like anyone else.
In Closing
Josef K. lost his trial. But Josef K. was alone.
You don’t have to be.
