अमूर्त

Imposing Criminal Liability to Corporate Bodies

Mohammad Habibzadeh, Mohsen Sharifi

Corporate bodies' dominance over various aspects of human's social life, specifically along with the growth of privatization process in the late 20th century is irrefutable and undeniable. Inefficiency of civil and administrative sanctions in preventing the corporate bodies from dangerous activities has made many legal systems to recognize the corporate criminal liability based on the reasons including criminology reality, similar bases for civil and criminal liabilities, higher precision in selection of managers among members and shareholders and difficulty in specifying the faulty corporate bodies. However, liability acceptance is accompanied by the essential questions about criterion for imposing a crime to corporate body; i.e. how can we impose the fault to an authoritative existent? Can physical and mental elements of crime be attributed directly to corporate body or it must be attributed indirectly- vicariously? Do a corporate body's criminal intent and behavior lower to the related members' criminal intent and behavior? Or can we achieve an intent and behavior liability model to prosecute criminal intent and behavior in the corporate body itself as well as its structure without emphasizing on recognition of the guilty person? The law doctrine does not believe in a unique model concerning the crime attribution to a corporate body. Some models including vicarious liability model rely on agency principle and assume the corporate body as indirect liable. On the other hand, some models including Alter Ego Doctrine, Aggregation Doctrine and Corporate Body Policy consider the individual as direct liable. In this paper, we are going to study various approaches to corporate bodies' criminal liability; and it is assumed that appropriate model is one that does not restrict to legal person, but searches for liability in corporate body structure and transfers it from legal person to corporate body.