Amendment on the Act No. 418/2011 Coll., on the Criminal Liability of Legal Entities

Amendment No. 183/2016 Coll.
With effect from: 1 December 2016

Under this amendment legal entities might be held liable for a much larger scope of criminal activities then they were in the past. As opposed to the current exhaustive list of crimes for which legal entity could be held liable, the new regulation provides for so-called negative list. All the crimes specified in the Special Section of the Criminal Code should be applicable also on legal entities provided that these crimes are not explicitly excluded as the crimes which cannot be committed by legal entity because of their very nature (e.g. manslaughter, participation in suicide, brawl etc.).

Thus, according to the new regulation, also a medical facility might be held liable for the crimes against life and health or a publishing house for the crime of defamation.

On the other side, the amendment extends the possibilities of exculpation (if the legal entity makes all the efforts which could be reasonably required in order to prevent its employees, managers or members of statutory bodies from committing the criminal offence).

Let us remind you that for the crimes committed by legal entities, legal entity could be sentenced, as regards the seriousness of the penalty, from publishing of the judgment up to liquidation of the legal entity. (open the official wording)