Full Description
When corporations carry on their business in a grossly negligent manner, or take a cavalier approach to risk management, the consequences can be catastrophic. The harm may be financial, as occurred when such well-regarded companies as Enron, Lehman Brothers, Worldcom and Barings collapsed, or it may be environmental, as illustrated most recently by the Gulf oil spill. Sometimes deaths and serious injuries on a mass scale occur, as in the Bhopal gas disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear explosion, the Paris crash of the Concorde, the capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise, and rail crashes at Southall, Paddington and Hatfield in England.What role can the law play in preventing such debacles and in punishing the corporate offenders?
This collection of thematic papers and European country reports addresses these questions at both a theoretical and empirical level. The thematic papers analyse corporate criminal liability from a range of academic disciplines, including law, sociology/criminology, economics, philosophy and environmental studies, whilst the country reports look at the laws of corporate crime throughout Europe, highlighting both common features and irreconcilable differences between the various jurisdictions.
Contents
Preface Part 1: Thematic Issues 1. Containing Corporate Crime: Civil or Criminal Controls? 2. A Legal Person's Conscience: Philosophical Underpinnings of Corporate Criminal Liability 3. The Challenges of Regulating Powerful Economic Actors 4. State Complicity in the Production of Corporate Crime 5. Penalising Corporate 'Culture': The Key to Safer Corporate Activity? Part 2: Organisational v. Individual Liability 6. The Organisational Component in Corporate Crime 7. Individual Liability of Company Officers 8. Squaring the Circle: The Relationship between Individual and Organisational Liability Part 3: Particular Offences 9. Environmental Offending, Regulation and 'The Legislative Balancing Act' 10. Investigating Safety Crimes in Finland 11. Financial Crime and Litigation: Aftermath of Shadow Banking and Subprime Crisis 12. Concluding Observations Part 4: Country Reports 13. Austria 14. Belgium 15. Czech Republic 16. Denmark 17. Estonia 18. Finland 19. France 20. Germany 21. Italy 22. Ireland 23. Lithuania 24. Luxembourg 25. Netherlands 26. Poland 27. Portugal 28. Romania 29. Slovenia 30. Spain 31. Sweden 32. UK
