A responsabilidade penal da pessoa jurídica: reflexões para a construção de um sistema

Abstract

In view of the new features of modern economic crime, perpetrated under the protection of large financial complexes, the issue of criminal liability of the legal entity has been reactivated with increasing force. In this way, the traditional system is considered ineffective and insufficient merely for civil or administrative repression. The traditional parameters of the theory of crime are being gradually reformulated and revised, as regards the legal entity as an active subject of crime, in view of the new reality imposed on us. The above-mentioned table is calling for a revision of the old Latin societas delinquere non potest (ie, "societies can not delinquire"), as a way of preserving the proper function of criminal law to protect juridical goods essential to society , since the powerful economic groupings have been very harmful to the protection of the social order, especially with regard to economic crimes and against the environment, and practice shows the insufficiency of mere individual criminal repression. The system built in France by the Penal Code of 1994 is the first example of application of the institute in a country of the Roman-Germanic tradition. In the case of Brazil, despite the aspirations set forth in the Constitution, it has not yet been possible to establish a system with solid and precise ordinary legislation.