Abstract

The article revolves around the criminal policy trend observed on an international level, which consists in the more or less coactive transfer to private entities -specially to companies and their officers- of crime prevention and investigation functions that are within the purview of the State criminal justice system, as well as the doubts regarding the legitimacy (and eventually the constitutionality) of some manifestations of this “forced privatization” of the economic criminal law. Specifically, the imposition of duties of action in the areas of criminal product liability, money laundering, criminal liability for the acts of employees, as well as the unprecedented challenge presented by the development of corporate “internal investigations”, carried out under State pressure, to the traditional guarantees of the criminal process.

Keywords

forced privatization compliance criminal responsibility of corporate officers corporate criminal liability internal investigations