Criminal Law and Financial Regulation

Financial regulation makes extensive use of criminal law as a means of enforcement. However, the use of criminal law is problematic in the financial field, because in many cases the criminal means perceived as unjust and inefficient. A central solution to this problem is the creation of administrative enforcement proceeding - alongside and instead of – the criminal enforcement proceedings. The Israeli legislator adopted this solution as part of the Efficiency of Enforcement Procedures in the Securities Authority (Legislative Correction) Act of 2011. But a critical view of the legislation shows that the creation of the administrative enforcement procedure, designed to ease the friction between criminal law and financial regulation, only increases it more, as it blurs the limits of criminal law.

The course discusses the limit between criminal and administrative fora in financial regulation, particularly in the field of securities laws. The discussion deals with different legal phenomena which impede the enforcement of the criminal law, the various layers of law enforcement system and the different approaches to criminal law being used in the design of an enforcement system. The discussion would grant theoretical tools for critical thinking regarding the tension between criminal and administrative enforcement in financial regulation, and contribute to the understanding of the new administrative enforcement mechanism, which takes a key role in contemporary economic enforcement.