Responsibility 231/01 also for individual businesses: Supreme 15657/2011 of 20 April 2011

Even for individual businesses apply the administrative liability of companies and organizations for crimes committed by its employees pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/01.

With sentence no. 15657/2011 filed April 20, 2011, the Court of Cassation, Criminal Division III, has been expressed about the administrative liability of companies and organizations for crimes committed by its employees pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/01. Specifically ruled that these rules also apply to sole proprietors, thus reversing the previous policy.

The Decree. 231/01 requires institutions with legal personality should adopt organizational models and code of ethics which might prevent the commission of offenses by the company.

In the judgment N.15657 those obligations are extended to individual businesses, which will have to adopt a structure similar to that of large companies, under penalty of heavy fines or even closure.

The basic requirements are to:

prepare an organizational model;

establish a monitoring system;

provide training programs;

identify a mode of management to prevent the commission of crimes;

introduce a disciplinary system.

The penalties provided for shall instead:

fines;

seizures;

publication judgment;

interdiction exercise;

allow suspension or revocation;

ban on advertising activity;

excluding public subsidies;

prohibition on contracting with the public administration.

 

Here are some basic steps of the judgment 15657/2011:

"There is no doubt that the rules laid down by Legislative Decree No. 231/01 is certainly applicable to limited liability companies cc , As it is well known that many individual businesses often rely on a complex internal organization that is independent from systematic intervention of the owner of the enterprise for the solution of certain problems and can often wrap up the responsibility to anyone other than the entrepreneur but who operate in the interest the same individual enterprise. "

 

"The activities related to the enterprise (like that due to the individual firm itself) is activity which belongs to an individual and not as a legal person understood as a company in person (or corporation), it is undeniable that individual enterprise (essentially divergent, even from a semantic point of view from the cd) well is similar to a legal person in which the person becomes confused entrepreneur as an individual physical exercising an activity, which leads to the conclusion that from a purely technical point of view, a firm must be considered the activity of the entrepreneur - natural person on whose definition must make reference to Articles. 2082 and 2083 of the Civil Code "

 

"A reading constitutionally the provision in question should lead to confer with the provisions of paragraph II art. 1 of Legislative Decree word in a wider scope, the more so, not cogliendosi no mention in the text concerning the individual businesses, their failure does not amount to exclusion, but, if anything, to an implicit inclusion of the recipients of the standard. "

 

"Could in fact arise in conflict with constitutional requirements in terms of the reasonableness of the system."

 

02/05/2011

The team of ReteIngegneri.it