Corporate Criminal Liability: An Overview of the Croatian Model after 20 Years of Practice

Abstract

The Croatian legislators introduced the concept of criminal liability for legal entities already in 2003 with the adoption of the Law on Criminal Liability of Legal Entities. Influenced by the writing of esteemed domestic scholars, and inspired by French law, the legislators opted for a system linking the liability of corporations to the liability of the responsible person. There were very few cases in practice during the first years of its application, and the situation changed after the first prominent indictment of this type against the ruling political party for economic crimes. Since then, the legislation has been amended several times and a significant body of jurisprudence has developed. In the first part of this paper, I will describe the chronology of the development and formation of the Croatian legislative model of corporate criminal liability. The second part will analyze 31 available final court judgments, which will be the basis for the conclusion about the issues in the practical application of the legislative model and, more generally, the phenomenon of criminal offenses committed by legal entities in Croatia. Based on this analysis, I will indicate the potential deficiencies of such a concept. In the context of future development, special attention will be given to the problem of economic crimes committed by AI corporate systems.