CHILE Law and Practice Contributed by: Jorge Bofill and César Ramos, Bofill Escobar Silva
eral legislation. Chilean law on this matter states that, firstly, the extradition treaty will regulate extradition circumstances and process. If there is no applicable treaty, the rule of reciprocity should be followed. And lastly, if the rule of reciprocity cannot be followed, the rules of the Code of Private International Law should be applied. Chile is a member of INTERPOL, and the National Central Office (OCN) Santiago, a special unit of the Investigations Police, is entrusted with international co-operation on this matter. Since 2024, this unit also involves members of the Police ( Carabineros de Chile ), Chilean Coast Guard, National Customs Service, and General Directorate of Maritime Territory and Merchant Marine, soon to be joined by the Chilean Gendarmerie . 1.5 Corporate and Personal Liability In the context of Chile’s application to become a per - manent member of the OECD, Law No 20,393 was enacted in 2009, introducing into the Chilean legal system the concept of corporate criminal liability. Since the enactment of Law No 20,393, the list of offences for which a company can be held criminally liable has been extended several times. Before Law No 21,595, companies were criminally liable for the following crimes: bribery, money laundering, financing of terrorism, receipt of stolen goods, disloyal man - agement, commercial bribery, unlawful negotiation, misappropriation, instructing a worker to attend the workplace during a quarantine, and certain conduct related to water pollution and illegal fishing activities. However, Law No 21,595 on Economic and Environ - mental Crimes introduces profound changes into Law No 20,393, applicable to any crimes committed after August 2024. According to this new law, companies will be criminally liable for every “economic crime” listed in Law No 21,595, which translates into more than 200 offences, exponentially expanding the list of imputable offences. Amongst them, it is worth noting fraud, collusion, corruption between individu - als, crimes related to insolvency, and environmental crimes. Law No 21,595 also states that the responsibility of legal entities can be prosecuted when:
• the illegal conduct consists of the specific crimes listed by the law, which has been relevantly expanded; • the illegal act is carried out by a person who holds a charge, function or position in the legal entity, a person who provides services to the company managing their affairs before third parties, with or without representation, a person related in the previous terms with a different legal entity, that provides services to the company managing their affairs before third parties, with or without repre - sentation or that lacks operational autonomy with regard to it, when there are ownership or participa - tion relationships between them; • the act has not been exclusively committed against the legal entity; and • the perpetration of the criminal act was favoured or facilitated by the lack of effective implementation of a suitable crime-prevention model by the legal entity. After the enactment of Law No 21,595, according to Article 4° of Law No 20,393, compliance programmes will be considered appropriate for having the afore - mentioned exemption effect, provided that – consid - ering the company’s corporate purpose, line of busi - ness, size, complexity, resources and activities – the compliance programme seriously and reasonably considers the following aspects: • identification of the activities or processes of the legal entity that involve the risk of criminal conduct; • the establishment of protocols and procedures to prevent and detect criminal conduct in the context of the activities referred to in the previous point, which must necessarily consider safe reporting channels and internal sanctions in the event of non-compliance; • assignment of one or more persons as responsible for the application of the protocols (provided with independence, effective management and supervi - sion powers, direct access to the administration, and the material and immaterial resources and means necessary to adequately carry out their tasks); and • the provision of periodic evaluations by independ - ent third parties and mechanisms for improvement or updating.
30 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook