The Fraudulent and Culpable Bankruptcy in Complex Approach, with Special Regard to the Practice of the Royal Hungarian Curia

The protection of creditors' interests is ensured by several areas of law, for example by civil law or insolvency law, but the criminal law should provide protection against the most dangerous infringements. The first Hungarian Criminal Code (Act V of 1878) regulated two forms of delicts which protected the creditors’s economic interest against the fraudulent conducts of the bankrupt person: the fraudulent and culpable bankruptcy. In my study, fisrtly I seek to answer the question of what was the protected legal matter (Rechtsgut) of these delicts. It is an essential question because in my study I used teleological interpretation, which is equal with the legal matter-centered interpretation in criminal law. Following the identification of the legal matter, I will analyse the fraudulent and culpable bankruptcy from a dogmatic point of view. Since the statutory definitions of these delicts contained more definitional elements which fall within the scope of a non-criminal law (e.g. definition of bankruptcy) legal field, so I have sought to answer the question whether the highest Hungarian judicial forum, the Royal Curia has assigned autonomous criminal law meanings to these conceptual elements or has interpreted them in the context of the norms of the relevant non-criminal law (e.g. insolvency or commercial law) area. During my research, I compared the different dogmatic views based on the criminal law literature of the 19th and 20th century, after that I systematically analysed the relevant decisions of the Royal Hungarian Curia between 1880 and 1932.