Full text
Text in force since 1 July 2015.
The text below is the official Spanish wording of this provision; the summary and guidance above are in English.
TÍTULO II — De las personas criminalmente responsables de los delitos
Text in force since 1 July 2015.
The text below is the official Spanish wording of this provision; the summary and guidance above are in English.
History of reforms to this article, from oldest to most recent, as recorded in the BOE’s consolidated legislation.
In force from 23/12/2010 to 16/01/2013
In force from 17/01/2013 to 30/06/2015
Article 31 bis establishes the criminal liability of legal persons. A company may be criminally liable for offences committed, in its name and for its direct or indirect benefit, by its legal representatives or by those authorised to make decisions or holding powers of organisation and control; and also for offences committed by employees under its authority where the duties of supervision, oversight and control were seriously breached.
The provision allows the legal person to be exempt from liability if it proves that, before the offence was committed, it had effectively adopted and implemented an organisation and management model suitable for preventing offences of that nature. The text requires that model to identify risk activities, set out decision-making protocols, provide a financial-resource management model, impose a duty to report risks and breaches to a control body with autonomous powers, establish a disciplinary system, and be periodically reviewed. In small companies, that supervision may be assumed directly by the management body.
The defense of the legal person turns on the real effectiveness of the compliance programme, not its mere formal existence: showing that the model was in place, properly resourced and actually applied, and that the individual offender fraudulently circumvented it, allows the company to invoke the exemption or, where it can only be partly proven, the mitigation of penalty that the article itself provides.
Legislative reform discussed
See the summary of this reform, the Criminal Code articles affected and the BOE link on our criminal-law reforms page.
View the reform· BOE-A-2015-3439Orientative data computed from the highest prison term mentioned in this article. Aggravated or mitigated subtypes, non-custodial penalties and concurrence rules may alter the outcome in each specific case.