The Criminal Division of the French Supreme Court has come to ensure that no manoeuvre could prevent the application of criminal law, not even the impossibility for the courts to identify with certainty the legal body or representative, a necessary condition for prosecuting and convicting corporations.
It seems that some individuals have imagined that maintaining public order was only a secondary purpose of the law and that the main purpose was to circumvent it.
Thus, in the case submitted to the Court of Cassation, the appellant company complained to the Court of Appeal that it had been convicted without first identifying the body or representative that had committed the offences being prosecuted on its behalf.
It is true that the investigation and the hearing before the trial judges had in no way made it possible to identify its legal representative. Despite the steps taken by the company, no one had come forward in that capacity. The identity of the legal representative therefore remained concealed.
The company therefore believed that it could rely on the provisions ofarticle 121-2 of the French Criminal Code, which sets out the rules governing the criminal liability of legal entities, to deprive the law of any effect on their actions.
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