Abstract
Despite over a century of development, the Thai law on corporate criminal liability remains doctrinally unfinished. This Commentary looks at the past decade of relevant Supreme Court jurisprudence. It traces lasting trends and highlights questions that still require resolution.
Highlights
The beginnings of corporate criminal liability in Thai law date back to the year 1911 when the Act on Partnerships and Companies[2] was enacted
As legal persons can only act through natural persons, the model of criminal attribution is of utmost legal interest: Whose action or omission triggers the legal person’s liability, and whose intention or negligence is relevant? To date, it has remained unclear which criminalisation model[5] Thai criminal law pursues
The Supreme Court held that Section 70(2) of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC),[7] according to which the purpose of a juristic person is expressed by its representatives (ผูแ้ ทนนิตบิ ุคคล; phuthaen nitibukkhon), was to be used to attribute the representatives’ criminal intention to the legal person, a limited company in the case
Summary
The beginnings of corporate criminal liability in Thai law date back to the year 1911 when the Act on Partnerships and Companies[2] was enacted. Violations of its rules could result in criminal liability of the partnerships and companies, i.e., the legal persons, themselves. Thailand’s first Penal Code of 1908,3 did not contain any rules on corporate crime. This changed when the aforementioned provisions from the Act on Partnerships and Companies were added to the Code (Sections 341-70) in. In 1963, the Thai Supreme Court extended the applicability of intentional crimes within the Criminal Code to legal persons in its seminal and much criticised Decision No 787–788/2506. Most recent Supreme Court cases from the years 2010 (B.E. 2553) to 2020 (B.E. 2563) reveal serious doctrinal uncertainties
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