Aspects on the Regulation of the Legal Person's Criminal Liability

摘要

In the new Criminal Code, the criminal liability of legal persons' institution is regulated separately by the lawmaker, in a special title. The new regulation reproduces the principles on which this liability is based, maintaining the option for the direct, distinct and autonomous liability model from that of the natural persons acting for the legal person or who neglected to act for it, as well as the requirement of existence of the legal personality as a prerequisite for retaining the criminal liability of collective entities. As a distinct element of novelty, the lawmaker has restricted the criminal immunity of public institutions developing an activity that cannot be the object of the private field, immunity no longer being general, but, in the new regulation, it only regarding the offences committed in the development of such activities. In the new regulation, private law legal persons to which the state or public authorities are shareholders can also be held criminally accountable, as they are distinct from the state or public authorities and their criminal sanctioning does not affect the main activity, namely the civil service of the state or of public authorities.