Admission of Guilt in Economic Crimes, Money Laundering, and Criminal Responsibility of Legal Persons

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200321.075How to use a DOI?

Keywords

admission of guilt, money laundering, criminal liability of legal persons

Abstract

Admission of guilt in economic crimes in the Spanish system of criminal law can be an element of reconciliation with the victim and society through mitigating factors of confession of the crime and reparation of the damage, suspension of the execution of the penalty or probation and plea bargaining. In addition, the reform of 2010 introduced in Spain the criminal liability of legal persons and incorporated money laundering to this innovative model of criminal responsibility. Soon after, Organic Law 1/2015 modified the hitherto barely applied regulation. It is quite surprising that Organic Law 1/2015 boasts of making “a technical improvement”, as it incurs obvious contradictions by exempting criminal liability to legal persons for a money laundering that should not have existed due to the adoption and effective execution of suitable or adequate compliance programs to prevent it. Even when an interpretation in accordance with the principle of validity requires understanding suitability, adequacy or effectiveness in a relative sense, the exemption is condemned to “insignificant use”, demonstrated by the Italian experience. In the majority of cases the mitigating factor, provided for the “partial accreditation” of the prevention systems, will be applied. This is also the case in the USA, cradle of compliance. The most frequent will be that the mitigating factor is “skillfully combined with plea bargaining”. This is the case in the USA, cradle also of the sentence bargaining. The Crime and Courts Act introduce these informal agreements on 2014 in English law. These plea bargaining are also possible in Spain for legal persons. Finally, admission of guilt by legal persons after the commission of crime can be an element of reconciliation with the victim and society through four mitigating factors: confess the crime, collaborate with the investigation, repair or lessen the damage and adopt an effective compliance program.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Miguel Abel Souto
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/03/24
TI  - Admission of Guilt in Economic Crimes, Money Laundering, and Criminal Responsibility of Legal Persons
BT  - Proceedings of the XVII International Research-to-Practice Conference dedicated to the memory of M.I. Kovalyov (ICK 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 14
EP  - 18
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200321.075
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200321.075
ID  - Souto2020
ER  -