Starting from November 19, 2017 and following an amendment of the Anti-Mafia Code, additional criminal conducts will trigger corporate criminal liability pursuant to Legislative Decree no. 231 of 2001. (If you are not yet familiar with “231”, i.e., the Italian law setting forth criminal corporate liability, you may refer to our previous blog post for an overview of such legislation).

Section 25-duodecies of Legislative Decree no. 231 of 2001 has been amended by the introduction of three new paragraphs (1-bis, 1-ter and 1-quater) relating to the following crimes in the area of illegal immigration:

• Procured illegal entry into the State; and
• Favoring illegal permanence into the State.

The full list of crimes and sanctions can be found here.

The idea is to punish companies who take advantage of illegal immigration, as well as to provide an incentive to companies to organize their activities in order to prevent such corporate crimes (in fact, companies are exempt from liability if they set up and actively pursue organizational models aimed at preventing corporate crimes). It is, however, unclear if continuously increasing the list of crimes that companies must prevent is an efficient way to do that.