Atenuación de la responsabilidad penal de la persona jurídica a través del sistema Compliance.

Abstract

Criminal liability of legal entities and compliance are central issues in the context of corporate criminal law. The Reformatory Law to the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code in Anti-Corruption Matters, approved in 2021, encourages companies to integrate effective compliance systems as preventive measures against possible criminal risks and sanctions. This legislation establishes a legal framework with the specific objective of strengthening integrity and ethics in the internal structures of companies, promoting regulatory compliance. This study focuses on a question of transcendental importance: Does indeterminacy in the compliance system considered as a mitigating factor in the criminal liability of the legal person effectively impact the application of the law in legal practice? To discuss this business problem related to the management and mitigation of criminal risks, articles 45 and 49 of the Organic Integral Criminal Code are used, highlighting the Compliance program as a mitigating factor. The objective of this work is to demonstrate, through theoretical and inductive approaches, as well as practical methods, including dogmatic and qualitative comparative analysis, that, in Ecuador, the main problem lies in the absence of a specific adjective regulation that regulates Compliance programs in a precise and unified manner, determining that this absence stands as an obstacle of significant importance, whose resolution would not only motivate the government to develop public policies, but would also urge the establishment of a Compliance culture in the country.