In 2012, the Spanish legislator modified the article 31 bis CP so that political parties were also subject to corporate criminal liability, after having been excluded from this system in 2010. Three years later, in 2015, because of the “Plan de Regeneración Democrática” of the Popular Party, the latest reform to the regulation on the funding of political parties was approved. In this last reform, donations from legal entities were prohibited and the maximum amount donated by an individual was limited to 50,000 euros per year. That same year, the crimes of illegal funding of political parties were introduced into our legal system. This set of reforms drew a completely different panorama in terms of the illegal funding of political parties.
Thus, the present work constitutes an all-encompassing study that seeks to analyse the phenomenon of illegal funding of political parties. It includes the administrative regulation of the funding of political formations, the new crimes of illegal funding and the complex application of the corporate criminal liability system to political parties. In this sense, our goal has been to provide the keys to interpreting the different cases of illegal funding of political parties.