"Alongside the importance of conducting criminal proceedings as a general value, there is a growing awareness of the general importance of imposing criminal liability on a corporation. Admittedly, the issue of criminal liability imposed on a corporation is known as a complex issue that is fraught with conceptual and moral difficulties....However, despite the familiar difficulties that accompany this, criminal liability for a corporation was established in section 23 of the Penal Law, 5737-1977, and the concept in favor of enforcing such liability is taking root in law with the strengthening of the status of corporations in modern law and the consciousness that requires their subordination to a system of norms of conduct that will ensure respect for values that are essential to society and conformity with the prevailing perceptions of life."
(Emphasis added – M.A., 3).
This was also discussed by the Honorable Justice D. Barak-Erez in High Court of Justice case 4395/12 Dror Cohen v. Central District Attorney's Office (published in Nevo, 2012, hereinafter: the Railway Case),
"Indeed, today, the principle of corporate criminal liability is an institutional foundation of our law.... The reasons for recognizing it are mainly pragmatic – the centrality of corporations in economic activity and the concern that non-recognition of corporate criminal liability will allow criminal acts to be covered under the opaque veil of the corporate structure."
Mordechai Kremnitzer and Khaled Ganaim, "The Criminal Liability of a Corporation" in Sefer Shamgar, p. 33 (Part 2, 2003, hereinafter: Kremnitzer and Ganaim, Corporate Liability), analyze at length in their article the foundations and principles of penal law and clarify that imposing criminal liability on the corporation meets these principles. First, the authors clarify that it is the increasing involvement of corporations in the life of society and the individual that has led to the need to impose criminal liability on them. According to them (p. 42 of the article):