Legal entities can be held criminally liable in two cases according to article 31 bis of the PC:
● For offenses committed by its legal representatives, administrators or senior managers in the name or on behalf of the legal person and for its direct or indirect benefit.
● For offenses committed by employees acting in the exercise of corporate activities and for the direct or indirect benefit of the legal person, when they have been able to carry out the acts due to the serious breach, by the management, of their duties of supervision, monitoring and control.
After the reform operated by the Organic Law 1/2015 of the Criminal Code, regulatory compliance programs become vitally important, since the aforementioned Law establishes that the legal person will be exempt from criminal liability if prior to the commission of the crime, the management body has implemented a crime prevention model (criminal compliance program) to prevent the risk of committing crimes in the course of business activity.
The company will have to draw up a risk map and be in a position to prove that it has adopted and effectively implemented, prior to the commission of the crime, an organization and management model that includes the appropriate monitoring and control measures to prevent the most likely crimes, according to its sector of activity.
At Sánchez-Cervera abogados we are highly specialized in criminal compliance, working closely with our clients to implement or review their crime prevention models.
You can read here Circular 1/2016 of the State Attorney General’s Office on the criminal liability of legal persons following the reform of the Criminal Code, which came into force in July 2015.
He highlights the fact that international compliance standards are already beginning to exist.
One of the standards that is already being implemented in our country is UNE-ISO 19600:2015 on compliance management systems. Additionally, in October 2016 the ISO 37001:2016 standard on anti-bribery management systems was published.
At the national level, standards are also beginning to emerge, such as the recently approved and published UNE 19601 standard on criminal compliance management systems, which establishes the requirements for implementing a criminal compliance management system and thus creates a specific national standard in this area, with a clear aspiration to become a standard of reference for the various legal operators.
In the absence of other references, there is great interest on the part of companies in having their crime prevention programs comply with the standards published by the standardization entities, and even to have them audited and certified by independent third parties. All this for the purpose of trying to prove compliance with the requirements of the Criminal Code in order to consider that these programs are effective and have been properly implemented in the company.