"VIABILITY AND LEGITIMACY OF THE DIRECT CRIMINAL LIABILITY OF LEGAL PERSONS IN NICARAGUAN LEGAL ORDINANCE; CHANGE OF CURRENT PARADIGMS"

Abstract

It is known that in our criminal legal system only individuals are imputable (Principle of personal responsibility-Article 8 PC) and not legal entities. However, given the relevance of organized crime in today's context, it is a fact that companies are included as a criminal factor, source or focus of crime; hence, that the paradigm of individual criminal responsibility has changed in such a way that they have motivated an increasing tendency in Comparative Law to recognize the criminal responsibility of the legal entity itself.

In the current context, the focus is on news reporting on crimes committed by legal persons, although they have rights in the patrimonial (civil, mercantile, administrative, among others) that are comparable to those of a natural person; it is also appropriate to tolerate the same responsibility of individuals. Economic globalization and transnational political-criminal needs have generated normative changes in countries that are reluctant to accept this transformation of perspective from criminal law.

I believe it is important to open up in our system the debate on the appropriateness of incorporating the punitive responsibility of legal persons, and to study what happens in this field from comparative law to accept the repeal of the principle societas delinquere non potest, which, which is reaching us by the hand with the urgent need to respond to an organized and entrepreneurial criminality that has overflowed the natural channels of imputation of criminal law (the natural person).