Melbourne Law School

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Business persons and international criminal law: challenges of policy, principle and proof

Karagiannakis, Magdalini ( 2017)

This thesis addresses the challenges to the investigation and prosecution of business persons, including officials of corporations, before international criminal courts with a focus on the International Criminal Court. It examines this issue by considering the relationship between individual criminal liability for collective system crimes, substantive doctrine, modes of liability, the negative implications for the individual criminal responsibility of corporate officials caused by the lack of corporate criminal liability, prosecutorial policy regarding suspect selection and evidence collection and use. It is a novel study particularly with respect to the evidentiary challenges to the investigation and successful prosecution of private economic actors. Each of these factors operate so as to focus international criminal prosecutions on public and organisational actors involved in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, rather than private economic actors. Each of these factors make the prosecution of individual business persons at international courts under international criminal law, difficult and unlikely, but not impossible.