Objekt trestného činu poškozování věřitele podle § 256 TrZ
Authors: Průcha Václav 
Published: February 2025

In accordance with Section 256 Act no. 140/1961 Coll. of the Criminal Code as amended, hereinafter the CC, the criminal offence of damaging the interests of the creditor is classified as a criminal offence of failure in terms of legal theory and judicial practice. These criminal offences are more or less associated with the process of collecting claims and they represent a fairly specific category of tort in terms of economic criminality. The objective of the legal definition of the facts of these types of criminal offences was to provide increased legal protection to certain selected social interests (values) by the legislator. The protection would be implemented through the method of criminal-law regulation of social interaction. These interests (values) protected by criminal law are classed by the legal science as the so-called individual objects of a criminal act. The individual object of a criminal act as the object of criminal-law protection represents one of the main, and in a certain respect, one of the most important features of the facts of a criminal act, not only in terms of theory but also in terms of practice. The author looks at some common definitions of the individual object of a criminal act of damaging the interests of the creditor under Section 256 CC in his contribution entitled “The object of the criminal offence of damaging the interest of the creditor under Section 256 CC” (legal judicature), in relation to this issue the author points out certain potential difficulties with the associated definitions. At the same time the author proposes his own solution by defining the individual object of the criminal act as “the creditor’s right to maintain factual possibilities of satisfying claim through debtor’s property”, and in relation with this presentation the author outlines more specific characteristics of individual defining features of the stated definition. Further, the author looks in detail at definitions of some normative features of the facts of a criminal case of damaging the interests of the creditor under Section 256 CC in relation to the relevant off-criminal enactment which works with legal definitions corresponding with the normative features. The analysis of normative features takes into consideration the elementary principal differences between civil law contractual relationships and similar legal relationships regulated by the standards of the civil law in harmony with theoretical conclusions of civil law science. The normative features of the facts of a criminal act of damaging the interest of the creditor are looked at further, in particular in terms of the “creditor”, “debtor”, “claim” and “obligation”. The core of the contribution could be seen in the relatively extensive description of the issue of the defining feature of the individual object of the criminal offence, e.g. “the maintenance of the factual possibility to satisfy creditors’ claims”. A fairly lengthy commentary is devoted to the issue of the legal characteristics of “defeating creditor’s satisfaction” describing the violation of the individual object of a criminal act of damaging the interests of the creditor under Section 256 CC whilst the definition of the formal characteristics as presented by the author is also confronted with the approach represented by the mainstream of the recent criminal-law doctrine when the approach significantly determines decisions taken by general courts. In regards to the interpretation of the definition of the legal characteristics, closer attention is paid to the significance of legal security institutions, and similar institutions for the completion of the criminal act of damaging the interests of the creditor under Section 256 CC. The author concludes that from a formal point of view the issue of completion of the criminal offence of damaging the rights of the creditors under Section 256 CC must be viewed purely in relation to the possibilities of the creditor to satisfy the claim from the property of the specific debtor whilst the potential possibility of the creditor to gain alternative satisfaction from other sources as compensation for the payment due should not be relevant. The contribution focuses on the analysis of the existing enactment of the criminal offence of damaging the interests of the creditor under Section 256 CC de lege lata. Nevertheless, the conclusion mentions possibilities of using the legal considerations mentioned, de lege ferenda, in practice during the creation of new criminal law arrangements of these types of criminal offences, and to a certain extent during the process of legislative amendments of the existing off-criminal enactment of collecting claims.