Legislative Decree no. 231 of 8 June 2001, as amended, introduced the so-called "administrative" liability of companies for some types of crimes committed in the interest or to the advantage of the same companies. The Decree provides for a system of sanctions for the liability of legal persons. The system involves two main types of sanctions (neglecting accessory ones):
• pecuniary sanctions;
• prohibitive sanctions, applicable only to particularly serious crimes.
Pecuniary sanctions: a company that is held liable under the Decree is convicted to pay a fine; the amount of the fine depends on the type of crimes that it has committed and on the proceeds that it has unlawfully obtained therefrom.
Prohibitive sanctions: they may be temporary or permanent and are applied to all the assets of a company. However, these sanctions do not exempt the perpetrator of the crime from personal criminal liability.
Legislative Decree 231/2001 stipulates that, where all the requirements for "administrative" liability are met, the company is not held liable if it can demonstrate that:
• prior to the commission of the crime, its governing body has adopted and effectively implemented models of organisation and management suitable for preventing the crimes of the type that has occurred;
•a body of the company with autonomous powers of initiative and control (in small companies, this body may coincide with the governing body) has been vested with the task of monitoring the functioning of and compliance with the models, as well as of updating them;
•the offenders have fraudulently avoided compliance with the above models of organisation and management;
•the supervisory body has not omitted to exercise oversight or has not exercised inadequate oversight.
The following document, approved by GME's Board of Directors, contains the "Guidelines", the related Special Parts and the Code of Ethics.
•Guidelines
•Special Part 1: crimes against the Public Administration (Italian)
•Special Part 2: corporate crimes (Italian)
•Code of Ethics
•Supervisory Body