Models of Legal Persons Liability for Criminal Offences // Modeli odgovornosti pravnog lica za krivično djelo

Abstract

The Bosnia and Herzegovina legislations have accepted the accessory model of the legal persons’ liability for criminal offences, which, in the comparative legislation, has the status of a standard model. However, the practice shows that the prescribed conditions (bases) of the legal persons’ liability are sporadically applied, since the prosecutors tend to accuse solely physical persons and, quite seldom, legal persons. One of the shortcomings of the legally prescribed conditions (bases) of the legal persons’ liability may be described as a formalist approach to the elements of the legal persons’ liability, which, in one part, require the existence of certain formal acts of the legal person, such are decisions, orders or permissions. The other is that the legal person’s contributing is seen through the prism of activities of the persons or bodies that are registered with the registering court as the holders of supervisory or managerial functions in the legal person. At the same time, it is neglected the fact that the decision on committing a criminal offence is very often passed by the person or several persons who have the actual power to manage and make decisions on the legal person’s activities while, as a rule, there is no written trace of the decision. Therefore, the conditions (bases) of the legal persons’ liability for criminal offences should be altered so that they encompass the physical persons the actions of which, due to their actual power to manage the legal person’s activities, may be brought to a causal relation with committing the criminal offence. Finally, it should be excluded the possibility of establishing the legal persons’ liability in the cases when the perpetrator commits the offence in the name of the legal person and for the purpose of acquiring his own benefit thus it is necessary to add the condition that a legal person may be liable for a criminal offence solely if, by committing a criminal offence, it has acquired (or may have acquired) a material benefit or other kind of benefit or advantage.