Arvinder Sambei was engaged by the CoE, together with Ms Nicole Voorhuis (The Netherlands), to conduct a two day workshop for Georgian investigators and prosecutors on dealing with criminal liability of legal entities.
The workshop was undertaken under the auspices of the EU/CoE Programmatic Cooperation Framework for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus.
Whilst Georgia has a law on corporate criminal liability, it has not been widely implemented. To date, Georgia has only prosecuted 2 such cases. The purpose of the workshop to discuss the challenges they face and consider how to make that liability workable in Georgia, in particular, how to attribute corrupt acts to the legal entity.
To that end, the group discussed:
- The bases of legal person liability (criminal, quasi-criminal, administrative & civil);
- How to establish corporate liability in practice;
- The natural person as a ‘trigger’ for legal person liability;
- Criminal liability of supervisors and directors;
- Agents & intermediaries;
- Parent companies & subsidiaries; successor liability;
- How to start a case (sources of initial intelligence/information; proactive v. reactive investigations);
- Difference/similarities between investigating individuals v. corporations;
- Role of financial intelligence and financial investigations;
- Mutual legal assistance (MLA);
- Sanctions (including deferred prosecution agreements).
The OECD has opened a public consultation on foreign bribery and the liability of legal persons and the draft stock taking report + details of the consultation are available at: http://www.oecd.org/corruption/public-consultation-foreign-bribery-liability-legal-persons.htm
