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Conspiring With A Corporation

The law is clear that a corporation can conspire with its own directors, officers and employees for purposes of criminal liability under § 371. (Agreeing with the majority that an individual corporate officer is subject to prosecution under Section 1 of the Sherman Act because “the fiction of corporate entity, operative to protect officers from contract liability, had never been applied as a shield against criminal prosecutions. …”). “[T]he original purpose of the corporate entity fiction was to expand rather than shrink corporate responsibility by making a corporation answer for the negligent acts of its agents. ‘The fiction was never intended to prohibit the imposition of criminal liability by allowing a corporation or its agents to hide behind the identity of the other.’” As such, a corporation can be charged, convicted and sentenced under § 371 for conspiring with its own employees and agents to violate the law. Id.