CORPORATE CRIME

The corporates have come a long way from being accused of creating public nuisances or being a culprit under the law of torts. They can today easily be seen creating a grave dent in the working of any society. They have become the necessary evils today. The society cannot survive without them and at the same time it is becoming difficult to survive with them. The difficulty lies not only in the fact that it is way too difficult to put the blame on the companies for a criminal wrong committed by them rather the most challenging part is to put the blame on the right shoulders when a wrong has been done. Who carried the plan out, who drafted the plan to why the plan was drafted? What profits would be achieved are the few questions which keep the investigators of the corporate crimes busy.

Even though a separate legal presence and existence of the company has long been established by the courts yet, the complex hierarchy of todays’ mainstream body corporate make it a tiresome process to find out the real culprit who acted on behalf of that legal personification. The employees, the directors, the agents, the other stakeholders, all of them can be held liable guilty on behalf of the criminal acts of the company.

Money laundering, privacy frauds, nuclear disasters, human trafficking, environmental disasters, corruption, bribery, violence etc. are the few of the crimes which have been associated with the modern day multi-national giants. Their new characters have forced the courts to give newer interpretations about the concept of criminal liability of the corporates and also has led to new legislations being adopted where by the governments have incorporated new jurisprudence of handling the corporate crime and corporate guilt. In this chapter the researcher has attempted to analyse the concept and theories of corporate crime and criminality, that who are perpetrators of a corporate crime and who may be held liable for them and what are the various types of corporate crimes and their impact on the society.

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