International financial markets and criminal law: the case of market abuse offenses In the aftermath of the crisis

financial regulators brought criminal law to the forefront of much controversy. More specifically, in October 2011 the European Commission released a proposal Directive to introduce criminal sanctions for the traditional market abuse offenses: insider dealing and market manipulation. Although the

criminalisation of these offenses is not something new, the transition from an option to use criminal law to a requirement for a mandatory and uniform criminal law, as a core element of EU financial regulation, is

a first step towards the establishment of a new legal mentality. Given the fact that financial markets operate on a cross border basis it is crucial to be examined if the criminalisation of market abuse offenses could be achieved among several jurisdictions under a common legislative framework in terms of rationale and scope. In this paper, we will discuss market abuse offenses as a sui generis criminal law and we will seek to describe what is the social harm produced when a market is abused. More specifically, we will explore insider dealing and market manipulation as criminal offenses under the UK, and the EU law and we will analyze how market integrity and public confidence in financial markets could be justified or not as values such that their abuse requires the imposition of severe criminal sanctions.