ITALY Law and Practice Contributed by: Alessandro Pistochini, Francesca Lazzeri, Andrea Gaudio and Guido Stampanoni Bassi, Pistochini Avvocati Studio Legale
At the same time, Legislative Decree No 231/2001 establishes an autonomous administrative liability for legal entities if one of the crimes listed in the Decree (including bribery and corruption offences) is perpe - trated in the interest of – or to the advantage of – a company. All such provisions are enforced by the criminal court (following an initiative put in place by the prosecutor), which has a duty to assess individual and corporate liabilities and deliver judgments of acquittal or convic - tion. However, Law No 190/2012 established ANAC, an administrative authority aiming to prevent corruption in public administrations. ANAC has a broad range of powers – provided for in the new Public Procurement Code (Legislative Decree No 36/2023) – including the following: • analysis of factors facilitating corruption to iden - tify prevention initiatives (for this purpose, ANAC issued the three-year National Anti-Corruption Plan, which assesses corruption risk and identifies initiatives to mitigate it); • inspections through requests for information, acts and documents, and execution of initiatives required by the National Anti-Corruption Plan; • supervision of public contracts and tenders; • reporting to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in case of crimes or to the Court of Auditors for crimes det - rimental to the Treasury; • regulation through issuing binding guidelines; • management of the national database and digital records of public contracts and of the national reg - ister of Evaluation Commission members; • imposition of disqualifying and pecuniary sanctions for unjustified failure to provide, or for providing false, information or documents; and • key role in whistle-blowing rules (Legislative Decree No 24/2023), responsible for: (i) receiving and fol - lowing up “external reporting”, assessing allega - tions and addressing breaches; and (ii) imposing sanctions for violations of Legislative Decree No 24/2023, ensuring protection of persons reporting domestic and EU law violations.
Furthermore, on 1 June 2021, EPPO began undertak - ing its investigatory and prosecutorial tasks. EPPO is an independent and decentralised prosecution office of the EU with the competence to investigate, pros - ecute and bring to judgment crimes against the EU budget, such as fraud and corruption. 7.2 Enforcement Bodies Concerning the enforcement bodies, see 7.1 Enforce- ment . 7.3 Jurisdictional Reach of Enforcement Bodies For more on the jurisdictional reach of the enforce - ment bodies, see 7.1 Enforcement , and for more on temporal jurisdiction, see 3.1 Limitation Period . 7.4 Discretion for Mitigation and Aggravation Mitigation With reference to mitigation powers, it is important to highlight that they concern two different fields: admin - istrative law and criminal law. From the administrative perspective, ANAC Resolu - tion No 949/2017 introduced the possibility of extin - guishing the administrative pecuniary sanctions issued by ANAC, in the event that no disqualifying sanctions are applicable, by means of the payment of a reduced fine. Payment of the fine is due within 60 days from the notification of the violation, at a rate of EUR500 in the case of failure to provide the information requested and EUR1,000 in the case of providing false informa - tion. However, regarding potential mitigation powers in the criminal field, the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code provide for three different mitigation measures that may be applied by the criminal courts to reduce the sanctions described in 5.1 Penalties on Conviction . Plea Bargain Proceedings According to Article 444 onwards of the Criminal Pro - cedure Code, individuals may settle a charge through a plea bargain agreement, with the prosecutor setting
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