Contacts

The Third Criminal Section of the Supreme Court, in ruling no. 46032 of Dec. 16, 2021, reiterated what the boundaries are for the crime of failure to respond to requests for information from the National Labor Inspectorate. Some hints should be premised that pertain to the discipline in question, which is regulated in Art. 4 of Law July 22, 1961 no. 628.
The provision assigns a range of functions, entrusted to the Inspectorate, for the proper exercise of which it may have to acquire information.
These functions pertain to the supervision, first and foremost, of the execution of labor and social security laws, generally in all realities at which work is performed (Art. 4, c.1, lett. (a); on the enforcement of collective agreements (Art. 4, c.1, lett. (b); on the operation of social security, welfare and sanitation activities for the benefit of service providers by professional associations or their appointed bodies (Art. 4 c.1 lett. d). In addition to this, the rule assigns to the Inspectorate functions of detecting various information according to Ministerial instructions with respect to the areas indicated therein, and in general assigns any function mandated by provisions of law and regulation or delegated by the Ministry of Labor (Art. 4 c.1 lett. f, lett. g).
Finally, Art. 4 c.7 punishes, with criminal sanction, those who, lawfully requested by the Inspectorate to provide information under this article, fail to provide it or knowingly give it incorrectly or incompletely.
With regard to this case, the S.C. reiterated the principle that the conduct of the obligated party-usually the employer-is not criminally relevant in cases where the omission consists in failing to provide a response to a generic request for “work documentation,” since the configurability of the crime requires that there was a demand by the Inspectorate regarding specific information, instrumental with respect to the supervisory and control tasks indicated in the introduction.
In addition, the ruling clarifies that the offense can occur even when the INL is not operating in the context of administrative police investigations under Article 8 of Presidential Decree 520/1955, provided that, even in this case, there is a legally intimated request for specific information to be provided by the employer.
Judges of legitimacy on the basis of this premise have, in the case at hand, ordered the annulment of the judgment of the Tribunal on the grounds of defective reasoning, in that the judgment did not specify the documents and/or information that were the subject of the omission attributable to the defendant. (GB)