The crimes included in this area of Criminal Law cover a very wide range of acts whose object involves a patrimonial content. In this group of crimes, the subjective circumstance of the personal, contractual or corporate relationships of active and passive subjects constitute special cases. This diversity of types and elements makes their detailed treatment in these lines excessive, referring to some of the most relevant ones.
Our Criminal Code includes this group of crimes, in its facet of common crimes, in Title XIII of Book II, concerning Crimes against the patrimony and against the socioeconomic order, among which it includes the following:
THIEVES, ROBBERIES, EXTORTION, THEFT AND BURGLARY OF VEHICLES, MISAPPROPRIATION, SWINDLES, MISAPPROPRIATION OF ELECTRICAL FLUIDS AND ANALOGUES, PUNITIVE INSOLVENCIES, ALTERATION OF PRICES IN CONTEST AND PUBLIC AUCTIONS AND DAMAGES TO THINGS OTHER THAN THOSE INCLUDED IN THE CRIMINAL CODE.
Criminal liability of legal persons in Spain
Are you acting as a de facto or de jure director of a company operating in Spanish territory or a Spanish company? Do you think that you have suffered an injury to your property and rights as a result of a criminal act committed by a Spanish company? Along the following lines, the procedure lawyers based in our office in Spain point out the possibility that a company acts in a criminal way and can be punished as criminally responsible for the commission of such acts.
For any matter of a criminal nature do not hesitate to contact one of the procedural lawyers in Spain. The primitive regulation established in the 1995 Criminal Code included the impossibility for a legal person to be an active subject in a criminal act, embracing the aphorism socitas delinquere non potes.
Until 2010, the process established to prosecute the commission of a criminal act implemented through a legal person was limited to the derivation of the responsibility regarding the commission of the criminal act through the de jure administrator of said legal person, whose normative recognition is found in Article 31 of the Criminal Code, which provided that «whoever acts as de facto or de jure administrator of a legal person or in the name or legal or voluntary representation of another, shall be personally liable, even if the conditions, qualities or relations that the corresponding figure of the crime or misdemeanour requires to be the active subject thereof do not concur, if such circumstances occur in the entity or person in whose name or on whose behalf it is performed».
This regulation was made necessary to act against the administrator of the Spanish company, leaving the company itself safe from the need to carry out activities for unjust enrichment or any other means to safeguard the civil action derived from the crime.
Welex, your procedural lawyers in Spain
It is by means of the organic law 5/2010 of June 22, by which the limitation established to date regarding the exercise of actions to the criminal responsibility of the legal persons is surpassed, introducing a deep modification in the Criminal Code of 1995 in order to make possible the action against the legal person as criminally responsible. This legislative amendment also allows for the establishment of a punitive system consisting of fines and measures that may even include the dissolution of the company itself, without prejudice to the liability of those who, as de facto or de jure directors, may have intervened by action or omission in the felony.
Our system also includes the obligation to establish mechanisms to control and prevent the commission of criminal acts through the corporate structure, reducing its responsibility or mitigating it, depending on the case.
Our procedural lawyers in Spain can assist you both in demanding criminal liability from the legal entity and/or the de facto or de jure administrator, and in filing complaints or grievances to demand their criminal liability.
Do not hesitate to contact one of the Spanish procedural lawyers of our firm WeLex, lawyers and economists in Spain.
At Welex, Lawyers and Economists, we have the privilege of having the best and most qualified personnel to assist you in this type of situation, including a multi-disciplinary approach that will provide you with a complete treatment for this type of procedure.
