ABSTRACT
It is hardly surprising that in the business world there are several activities that have attracted criminal sanction. A crime is an act which the law, with appropriate penal sanctions, forbids; but as prohibitions are not enacted in a vacuum, we can properly look for some evil or injurious or undesirable effect upon the public against which the law is directed. That effect may be in relation to social, economic or political interests and the legislature has had in mind to suppress the evil or to safeguard the interest threatened. Before there can be a conviction for a crime, it is necessary for the prosecution to prove (a) that a certain event or a certain state of affairs which is forbidden by the criminal law has been caused by the conduct of a person (actus reus) and (b) that this conduct was accompanied by a prescribed state of mind (mens rea). It should be noted that there are instances where statutes have dispensed with the notion of the mens rea as an element of a crime.
