Insignificancia y Derecho penal económico

Abstract

The rule of insignificance in Criminal Law can limit the criminal sanction of some acts of low injuriousness, which formally are into a criminal category and suppose a minimal affectation for a legally protected right. In Economic Criminal Law, it is currently possible to find criminal offenses whose scope has not been correctly defined by the legislator, and which allow sanctioning acts of minimal harm. In this paper we start from a conceptualization of the rule of insignificance. Next, other close concepts such as «social adequacy» or «allowed risk» are delimited. An analysis is also carried out on the nature and foundation of this clause, in a máxima ratio of Criminal Law. The research work ends by assessing the application of the rule of insignificance in the context of economic crime, through three examples in the Spanish Criminal Code.