Albu Legal’s contribution to an international mapping of criminal liability of executive officers and legal entities

Albu Legal participated for Romania in Baro Alto ‘s international study, through the IR Global network, on corporate criminal liability vs. managers’ liability.

Baro Alto law firm carried out this survey – in partnership with the French think tank Institut pour l’Innovation Economique et Sociale (2IES) and Professor Pascal Beauvais, lecturer at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne– to investigate the connection between a legal entity’s criminal liability and that of its chief executive officer under French law.

To fuel reflection on the following subject: “Reconsider the connection between criminal liability of legal entities and that of their corporate officers for improved legal protection?”, Baro Alto decided to survey various foreign legal systems to find out what solutions they may have adopted in that respect.

Thus, Baro Alto contacted its IR Global network and organised a webinar on the subject on 1 March 2022. Baro Alto requested the participant law firms to validate the information it provided on their legal system and the connection between the criminal liability of legal entities and that of their executive officers. Information was collected from 20 countries, besides France, concerning the criminal liability of legal entities and executive officers in their legal systems.

Among main findings:

  • The liability of a legal entity and that of its executive officer coexists in most of the countries surveyed. In theory, the corporate criminal liability applies in most of the countries surveyed, except for Germany, Greece, and Italy, where a system of quasi-criminal liability exists.
  • Today, the system of direct liability of the legal entity is the most widespread in the countries surveyed. Some systems, such as in Belgium or the Netherlands, provide for direct liability, whereas others, such as in France, the United States and Denmark, have a principle of indirect attribution of criminal liability.