Tacit and Dissimulated Participation in Illicit Activity – Cartels, Terrorist and Criminal Groups and Other Joint Criminal Enterprises

Tacit and dissimulated participation in illicit activity tackles situations when a natural or legal person takes a part in the illicit activity but does not expressly declare its will to take part in such an activity or expresses will that is contrary to actual intent or behaviour. Or the person does not understand the content of the plans of the group or their real consequences due to linguistic misinterpretation, lack of experience or error in fact. The paper draws up possible legal consequences of these situations from several aspects. First, distinguishing from legal consequences of acts of private that are intended to be valid, while illicit act cannot be valid per se. Second, comparative view on different types of “group delicts”, such as cartels, machinations in public procurement, terrorist, and criminal groups, as administrative and/or criminal offences. Third, questions of accountability and attributability of such a tacit or dissimulated behaviour of a manager or an employee vis-à-vis administrative and criminal liability of legal persons. The analysis is based on the legal environment of Slovakia considering national and European Union law