Dr
Real name:
Sarah Bandini is a legal counsel and trial attorney, member of the Italian Bar Association, and a fellow scholar at the University of Bologna, specializing in Corporate Governance, White-Collar Crime, and Global Corporate Compliance.
After graduating summa cum laude at the University of Bologna School of Law, she started her professional career as a lawyer and legal counsel, collaborating with a renowned law firm in Bologna, which specializes in the criminal defense of banks, joint-stock companies, and executive leadership. In this role, she led dozens of cases, defending corporations and individuals charged with white-collar crime, bankruptcy, tax evasion, and money laundering. After her graduation, she also continued working in the academic field as a Subject Expert in Business Criminal Law at the University of Bologna. In 2017, she started a Ph.D. in Legal Studies, within which she conducted a research project on Corporate Control and Criminal Liability. The study focused on a specific assessment of all positions exerting an oversight function in the Corporate system - from the independent directors to the members of the Supervisory Board and the Internal Auditors. The purpose was to prove for each of such positions if they can determine their implication in a case of corporate misconduct, and primarily if they can act and prevent the crimes committed by the executive leadership. On May 28th, 2021, she graduated with a Ph.D., with a score of 5/5, and the thesis «Internal Corporate Control and Personal Criminal Liability. A Study on the Complicity by Omission in Corporate Crimes within Joint-Stock Companies». After completing her Ph.D., Sarah kept conducting research as a Post-Doc fellow. She further developed her study on Corporate Governance through a comparative analysis of foreign legal systems. She carried out part of this research work as a Visiting Scholar at Duke University School of Law and at the University of London's Institute for Advanced Legal Studies.
As a part of her academic work, she lectured as a Teaching Assistant in Criminal Law and Business Criminal Law for undergraduate students at the University of Bologna - School of Law. She served as a Speaker for several lectures at the Italian Bar Association of Bologna and the University of Bologna, among which the course Accounting records and financial statement in the criminal regulation, part of the seminar in Financial Statement and Accounting Records, from 2018 to 2020. In August 2021, she joined the Society for Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London as a Fellow Member.
She is currently pursuing a Master of Laws in Corporation at NYU School of Law, where she was awarded the Hauser Global Scholarship, a full-tuition and living stipend merit-based scholarship.