Risks mapping, biodiversity offences and criminal liability of legal persons: a necessary reform of the Criminal Code

Abstract

Since 2011, Organic Law 12/1995, of 12 December, on the Repression of Smuggling, recognises the criminal liability of legal persons in the offences against fauna and flora defined therein, thus theoretically —but not in practice, due to the absence of jurisprudential pronouncements— allowing the imputation of corporations. This normative reality makes the reform of the criminal code necessary, in the sense of including the liability of legal persons in the crimes of Chapter IV of Title XVI, in order to comply with the requeriments of the European Union and the reality of their commission dynamics as corporate crimes, demonstrated by the corresponding risk map, in terms of relevance, probability of occurrence and impact.