In relation to banking companies, the rules on the liability of entities for criminal offences complement the supervisory rules on compliance, controls and organisation. The two systems of rules partly converge and overlap, generating specific coordination problems and questions about their simultaneous application.
The authors of the contributions published in the Quaderno di ricerca giuridica No 97 took part in a research project promoted by the CNPDS Foundation and coordinated by Professors F. Centonze and S. Manacorda, aimed at taking stock of the state of application of the rules on the administrative liability of entities for offences, twenty years after Legislative Decree 231/2001. Participation in the project stimulated an activity of further investigation into the tangle of specific banking supervisory rules and the "231 system", aimed at delving into certain profiles and thorny issues that ˗ for the sake of synthesis ˗ could not be investigated in the aforesaid research.
The Quaderno illustrates, in an extended version, the results of the empirical analyses and theoretical investigations conducted on the application of the rules on criminal liability in the banking sector.
After an initial paper aimed at presenting the research, the methodologies of analysis followed and the main problematic matters addressed, the issues of greatest interest arising from the inclusion of Legislative Decree 231/2001 into the dense network of sector rules are analysed in specific contributions.
In particular, the second contribution dwells on the organisational and management models concretely adopted by intermediaries, which show the effort to "incorporate" the specific prevention rules pursuant to Legislative Decree 231/2001 into the complex regulatory pattern of banks' internal controls. What follows is an analysis devoted to the role and configuration of the supervisory body in banks, usually corresponding to the body with control functions, and to the information flows towards it. Another contribution takes an in-depth look into the application of the rules in banking groups, including cross-border groups, focusing on the issue of a possible "shifting" of liability from the group company to the parent company, which has considerable powers of management and coordination. Lastly, the last paper examines the role of the Supervisory Authority in ascertaining liability for offences, from the stage of preliminary investigations to that of the execution of the sanction, a stage that takes on peculiar connotations for banks.
In all the aspects examined, the analysis moves from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, with specific consideration, on the one hand, for the solutions concretely adopted by the banks dealing with Legislative Decree 231/2001 and, on the other, for the directions and principles expressed over time by case law.
