The effectiveness of recognizing corporate criminal liability and its impact on investment in developing countries- A critical comparative study in the American legal system
Dina Hassan
Criminal law - Faculty of law - Alexandria university
Abstract
This study focuses on one of the important problems that has sparked a deep controversy in criminal thought, namely the recognition of corporate criminal liability and the appropriateness of introducing such liability within the framework of the contemporary criminal policy, which is an odd exception to the major principles in the criminal law. Traditionally, It had been established that human being only is the pillar of the criminal law and the criminalization and penalization policies is concerned with him only, i.e. natural persons alone who possesses the human characteristics that are able with their free and aware will to commit crimes, and subjected to societal blame for violating the criminal rule. Then, only human beings, but not corporations, could be criminally liable. However, with the steady development of the capitalist economy, especially after the Industrial Revolution, the numbers and importance of corporations had increased and played a significant role in carrying out economic activities. Since then, so many crimes have been committed through corporations, which forced countries to try to find solutions to recognize corporate criminal liability to combat corruption. It may be surprising that the first countries in recognizing corporate criminal liability are the capitalist ones, whose economic policy rises primarily on promoting and encouraging investment. Such a fact opened the door for many questions, mainly with regard to the effectiveness of applying corporate criminal liability and its impact on promoting and encouraging investment especially in the developing countries that seek to attract the highest rate of foreign investment to enhance and support its national economy. In order to answer these questions, the researcher will divide this research into three sections. The first section is dedicated to present a quick overview on the general theory of corporate criminal liability. the second one is a case study for a criminal accountability of one of the big American corporations and what was the impact of such accountability on the economy. Finally, in the third section the researcher is trying to asses and evaluate the Egyptian criminal policy in combating corruption through recognizing corporate criminal liability for investment crimes
Keywords
"corporate criminal liability", "investment crimes", "white-collar crimes"
