Corporate business organizations in Nigeria: The challenges of monitoring crime-free operations

Abstract

The regulation of corporate businesses focuses both the corporation and its managers. The law has since recognized the business corporation as a legal but an artificial person, who functions through her natural persons acting as agents or organs. The company may exercise all the powers of a natural person. Thereby, it may be criminally liable for its acts just as its officers and other natural persons acting on its behalf. Crime-free operation of corporate businesses is of interest to investors, creditors, as well as the public at large. Therefore, since the inception of the realistic treatment of the principle of corporate personality through the veil-lifting device, there has been a great and sustained statutory advancement not only to ensure efficient corporate management but also to curtail the abuse of the corporate form for criminal purposes. Statutory control of corporate crimes is topical because corporate businesses proliferate at a remarkable rate in harsh and highly competitive economic environment, thereby engendering lots of unethical as well as totally unlawful business practices as corporate operators race viciously to the bottom. The general motivator could be the perception by the role-actors that business crimes have no visible victims. But they do. Otherwise, it was unprofitable for the law to regulate business operations at all. It is against this background that this article examines the regulatory framework as well as some important regulatory bodies that monitor corporate businesses in Nigeria.