CONTRIBUTION TO THE DETECTION OF THE CRIME OF FIGUREMAN IN ECUADOR

Abstract

Front men in many cases make a significant contribution to the criminal activity, in practice it is not uncommon to see how authentic professionals of the merely formal ownership and administration of companies manage, time after time, to emerge unscathed from those procedures penalties in which they are involved. This impunity is often explained by the more or less considered decision of the investigating judges themselves, who choose to leave figureheads out of the investigation when warn their condition as such to concentrate their efforts on the real owners and managers of the companies, whom they consider the main guilty of the crimes committed. This figure is used in Ecuador by organized crime for its purposes criminal; for example when a person lends his bank account, name, identity, signature, RUC or invoices, to acquire goods such as properties or vehicles, create companies, receive or send money, import or export goods, among others, for the benefit of a third party, could be committing a crime punishable by law. The case of figureheads lies precisely in the fact that they are partners and apparent administrators, often far removed from social activity, do not It is strange that they can ignore some essential aspects of the fact crime in which they are involved. In order to reduce the main causes of impunity, such as the difficulties of locating the figureheads, we can only appeal to a greater effort to part of judges and police, accompanied, certainly, by the necessary staff more and better human and material resources. In case of difficulties derived from the subjective aspect of the fact, on the other hand, the solution to punish to certain partners or merely formal administrators lies, basically, in the possibility of modifying some aspects of the current Law or in review, at least, the usual terms of its interpretation.