Will the Introduction of Surcharges to the Securities and Exchange Law Change the Japanese Legal System? - Issues Concerning Surcharges under the Securities and Exchange Law and the Antimonopoly Act -(in Japanese)

Recently in Japan, a surcharge (administrative civil money penalty) system was introduced to the Securities and Exchange Law and surcharges are raised in the Antimonopoly Act. Up to now, surcharges were considered to be an administrative disciplinary action and not a criminal penalty. This is due to the fact that at the time surcharges were introduced under the Antimonopoly Act, they were taken to be a divestiture of unlawful gains instead of a sanction, in order to avoid the issue of double jeopardy. However, since it is believed that the recent surcharge under the Securities and Exchange Law is clearly positioned as a sanction and surcharges in the Antimonopoly Act are changed into criminal penalty-tinged, this greatly modifies Japan's hierarchy of sanctions with respect to corporate penalties. In this article, we will organize the issues concerning the surcharge in question, from the perspective of the hierarchy of civil, administrative and criminal sanctions.