Rafael Aguilera

Rafael Aguilera Gordillo is a professor of Criminal Compliance and a PhD in the field. He is co-director of the Compliance Advisory LAB at Grant Thornton and adjunct professor of Criminal Law at Loyola University.  He has been  an academic visitor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford in 2019 and 2023, a research associate at  the College of Law at Florida International University in 2022 and an academic visitor at the Center for Law and Behavior, Faculty of Law at the University of Amsterdam in 2026. He also co-directs the Postgraduate Degree in Criminal Liability of Legal Entities, Forensic and Compliance in International Frameworks at the University of Valladolid and is a lecturer in the Master's Degree in Ethics of Artificial Intelligence at the Carlos III University of Madrid and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

He is considered a jurist expert in criminal liability of legal entities and Compliance, an area where he combines academic and research activity with legal advice, specialized training and consultancy, amassing extensive professional experience in the corporate context. In this sense, he has been giving conferences and sessions specifically aimed at compliance officers, members of the compliance body of multinationals, legal advisors of companies, corporate criminologists, lawyers and executives. In the international sphere, he has intervened as an expert in Compliance and Criminal Law in such prestigious forums as the United Nations High-Level Summit on Education and the Rule of Law – participating in the session "Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice" – or the XIV United Nations International Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (the most important in this field worldwide). He has been a delegate of the CSLS of the University of Oxford at the Congress (INDR) on regulatory models, compliance and ethical regulation and has been a member of the academic direction of the I International ICT Congress Law and Criminology in the New Digital Era. He is a researcher of the project "The Moral Value of Effort: Cooperation, Human Enhancement, and Intelligent Technologies" within the framework of the "Research Challenges" R+D+i Program of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, together with expert researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and a member of the DECOMESI Research Group "Common European Law and International Studies".

Rafael Aguilera was an international forerunner in the use of game theory, advanced modelling and behavioural game theory applied to criminal compliance, criminal risk analysis and clarification of the attribution of corporate criminal liability (2012). He was also one of the first researchers in criminal law in Spain to carry out a doctoral thesis (2018) that covered both the analysis of the current criminal liability regime for legal entities and the legal-criminal requirements of the compliance program and an evaluation of its foundation (proposing an in-depth update based on new scientific evidence on decision-making processes linked to compliance/non-compliance in corporate contexts). He is a member of the American Law and Economics Association (ALEA), evaluator of prestigious scientific legal journals such as the Electronic Journal of Criminal Science and Criminology (RECPC) and the UNED Law Review (RDUNED), author of several monographs and a wide range of specialized articles published in international academic journals. Among his works, the Criminal Compliance Manual (3rd Edition, Ed. Aranzadi LALEY) or Compliances and corporate criminal liability can be highlighted. Among other degrees, he holds a Master's Degree in Criminal Law from the University of Seville and the Interuniversity Institute of Criminology, and a Master's Degree in Public Law from the University of Cordoba. He also holds the title of "expert expert in Compliance", the CESCOM® Compliance certification and the accreditation of Internationally Certified Compliance Professional from the International Federation of Compliance Associations.

The Compliance Advisory LAB is a space of Grant Thornton's Forensic department focused on research on Compliance, criminal liability of legal entities, internal investigations and internal information systems. Among its purposes is the examination of the issues faced by this area, acting from a rigorous, independent and comprehensive scientific approach. In essence, it is about bringing together scientific studies and academic research with the corporate reality, so that those challenges and questions that arise in complex scenarios can be faced in a more solid way.