IF CRIME is indirectly committed by legal entities, courts will be able to sanction them through confiscation of financial assets according to an amendment to Slovakia’s Penal Code approved by parliament on April 27.
The amendment introduces indirect criminal responsibility on the part of corporate entities and new legal sanctions. If the Slovak president signs the legislation, it will become effective on September 1, the SITA newswire reported.
Sanctions introduced in the new legislation have two forms: confiscation of certain financial assets or confiscation of an entity’s entire assets.
In the first case, a court must first set the sum which the corporate entity is obligated to pay.
Only if the entity fails to comply will the entire financial assets be confiscated.
Sanctions involving the confiscation of the entity’s entire property will be mandatory in cases in which legal persons were sentenced by the court for several specific crimes, defined by law, and in which it was proven that the property was acquired through income stemming from specific kinds of criminal activity such as drug-related crimes, trafficking in people, extortion, counterfeiting of money and documents, criminal conspiracy, or terrorism.
3. May 2010 at 0:00 | Compiled by Spectator staff
