New legislation that enters into force roday (20th May, 2025) will implement the Sanctions Criminalisation Directive of the European Union in Finland. The purpose of the Directive is to ensure that offences against sanctions are punishable in all EU Member States and that the related national penal provisions meet a common minimum level.
The Criminal Code of Finland will mainly be amended by adding new provisions on sanctions offence, aggravated sanctions offence, negligent sanctions offence and sanctions violation. At the same time, the provisions on regulation offence will be amended so that they no longer apply to offences against sanctions.
The national implementation of the Sanctions Criminalisation Directive also leads to changes in corporate criminal liability. The principle of corporate criminal liability is that a legal person will be sentenced to a corporate fine if a person exercising actual decision-making power in the legal person has been involved in an offence or allowed the commission of an offence, or if the care and diligence necessary for preventing an offence have not been observed in the operations of the legal person. In the general penal scale provided for a corporate fine, the lowest amount of the fine is currently EUR 850 and the highest amount is EUR 850,000.
Under the new legislation, the sanctions offence, the aggravated sanctions offence and the negligent sanctions offence are subject to corporate criminal liability. This does not significantly change the current situation, as corporate criminal liability is already applied to the regulation offences. What is new, however, is that, as an exception to the general maximum amount of a corporate fine referred to above, the highest amount of the corporate fine for the above-mentioned offences against sanctions is five per cent of the turnover of the liable legal person but not less than EUR 850,000 and not more than EUR 40 million. This exception is based on the obligations under the Sanctions Criminalisation Directive.
You can read further information here.
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