Corporate Criminal Liability for the Criminal Offences in Lithuania

Cases, where operations of legal entities entail unfair income through the malpractice of improving financial reports, are quite frequent. Such behaviour is unacceptable and deserves a stern response from the state, not only against persons involved in illegal activities but also against particular legal entities resorting to such behaviour. The purpose of this article is to analyse the elements of corporate criminal liability in the legislation of Lithuania. The article investigates the fundamentals of corporate criminal liability with the major focus on the problems of distinction and applicability of relevant elements of the latter. The analysis emphasizes the assurance of the inevitability of corporate criminal liability. The article also discusses the method of criminalizing the liability of legal entities, chosen by the Lithuanian legislator, according to which criminal liability can arise only for a limited scope of criminal offences. Presumably, the current legal regulation enables an unreasonable avoidance of criminal liability in cases where the criminal offence falls outside the aforementioned limited scope, even though it was committed to gain a material advantage over the affected party. The article also addresses the guilt of legal entities. In this regard, the article criticizes the approach of the Supreme Court of Lithuania for its evident limitation of corporate criminal liability, especially in the context of large corporations owned by many shareholders. As a possible solution, it was proposed to lay criminal responsibility on corporate governance bodies instead of the shareholders.