Forum. When in 1994 was discussed in France the possibility of incorporating into our law the criminal liability of companies, legal persons, a law professor, exclaimed : “For my part, I’ve never dined with a person with a moral ! “The reform was, however, adopted the ground that the offences committed within companies were carried out for the benefit of those and that one would thereby cease to pay” lampistes “, physical persons up to then only from continuing operations.
The penalties incurred by legal persons (five-fold increase of fines, closure of establishments, or even possible judicial dissolution) fulfilled the same desire to pay the real officials.
Las, the desire to appear before the judge for a “real” person and punish the persons who are perpetrators or accomplices of offences carried the day. We witnessed this fact in a quasi-generalization of the double in question : that of the company and that of its officers or leaders. In practice, today, the prosecution limited to the single legal entity do not relate to the essential violations unintentional (industrial accidents, or environmental) in which the individual responsibilities are too diffuse.
Some of the comments which accompanied the law Fir 2 December 9, 2016, in order to combat corruption, have been able to maintain the illusion that only the company would pay : the heavy convention judicial of public interest, negotiated with the prosecutor, a form of civil penalty charged to the companies, would limit or even prevent any individual pursuit. The act provides, however, expressly to the contrary, and the prosecutor’s office, national financial has stated on several occasions that he is not ceding anything, even if the discussion may allow for a few adjustments.
Convictions personal
Therefore, the leaders, encouraged to multiply the…
