Corporate Criminal Liability In Europe

When corporations carry on their business in a grossly negligent manner, or take a cavalier approach to risk management, the consequences can be catastrophic. The harm may be financial, as occurred when such well-regarded companies as Enron, Lehman Brothers, Worldcom and Barings collapsed, or it may be environmental, as illustrated most recently by the Gulf oil spill. Sometimes deaths and serious injuries on a mass scale occur, as in the Bhopal gas disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, the Paris crash of the Concorde, the capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise, and rail crashes at Southall, Paddington and Hatfield in England.What role can the law play in preventing such debacles and in punishing the corporate offenders? This collection of thematic papers and European country reports addresses these questions at both a theoretical and empirical level. The thematic papers analyse corporate criminal liability from a range of academic disciplines, including law, sociology/criminology, economics, philosophy and environmental studies, whilst the country reports look at the laws of corporate crime throughout Europe, highlighting both common features and irreconcilable differences between the various jurisdictions.

Discussions of the possibility to attribute liability to legal persons for committing offenses are far from new. The EU landscape however is scattered. Although there are obligations for the Member States to introduce liability for legal persons committing offenses, diversity remains as to: the offenses that may trigger liability * the legal persons that may be held liable * the attribution theories and mechanisms used * the type of liability, which may be either penal, administrative, or civil * the sanctions that legal persons may incur. Consistent policy making requires an identification of the main commonalities and differences in view of being able to adequately reflect them in cross-national policy initiatives. Hence, the European Commission launched a call for tender for a study on the issue, which was awarded to the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP). The results are published in this book. Based on comparative legal analysis in the EU27, recommendations are formulated relating to the EU approximation policy (amongst others to reconsider the concept of a 'legal person' and to look into the need for specific 'legal person'-offenses), the functioning of mutual recognition (amongst others to extend the current mutual recognition instrumentarium), the exchange of information (amongst others to develop a criminal records policy), and procedural safeguards (amongst others to secure equivalent protection outside a criminal liability context). In other words, a helicopter view is taken to ensure consistent EU policy making. (Series: Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy [IRCP] - Vol. 44)

Corporate Criminal Liability is on the rise worldwide: More and more legal systems now include genuinely criminal sanctioning for legal entities. The various regulatory options available to national criminal justice systems, their implications and their constitutional, economic and psychological parameters are key questions addressed in this volume. Specific emphasis is put on procedural questions relating to corporate criminal liability, on alternative sanctions such as blacklisting of corporations, on common corporate crimes and on questions of transnational criminal justice.

With the coming into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the competences of the European Union in the realm of criminal law have greatly expanded. The EU, in a multitude of legislative instruments, requires its Member States to criminalize a big variety of harmful conducts. However, the criminal law legislation of the EU has, so far, almost exclusively focused on specific criminal offenses and has failed to develop and define general principles of criminal law. The EU frequently refers to conduct, attempt, and participation in its legislation, but fails to determine what these concepts should denote. As a result, the scope of European criminal law may differ among European countries as Member States will apply their national doctrines to European legislation. This book steps into this lacuna by establishing what actus reus and rules on participation should look like in European criminal law. In addition, it investigates inchoate offenses and corporate criminal liability. How should the doctrines of conduct, omission, and causation be defined? How to attribute liability in case several people cooperate to bring about a criminal result? What should preparing and attempting a crime denote in European criminal law and how can corporations best be held responsible for the harm they have caused? To answer these questions, this book distills common general principles on actus reus, participation, inchoate and corporate liability from the national criminal justice systems of the Member States, as well as from EU law. These results are subsequently merged into coherent principles of European criminal law. The author, Dr. Johannes Keiler, was awarded the prestigious criminal law Modderman Prize for this book in 2014. (Series: School of Human Rights Research - Vol. 60)

Environmental Criminal Liability and Enforcement in European and International Law assesses the legal, theoretical and practical implications of interstate cooperation aimed at harmonising environmental criminal law standards. The book analyses the rationales for criminalisation of environmental offences and the approaches to harmonisation under specific European and international legal instruments.

Every managerial decision is risky, at least to some extent. Conducting business is impossible without venturing into new territories and even the most ordinary daily choices could turn out to be failures. Excessive risk, however, can be very detrimental as was starkly illustrated by the most recent financial crisis. By criminalising managers' excessive risk-taking criminal law enters a sphere which is at the core of the activity it affects. At the same time it provides for criminal punishment for courses of conduct that, without doubt, can be extremely harmful. The objective of this book is to examine existing criminalisation of excessive risk-taking as well as to analyse whether such criminalisation is desirable and if yes, under which conditions.