Economic criminal law began to develop in the territory of the Republic of Croatia at the beginning of the 12th century. century. Economic crimes are of a changing nature, so criminal law generally lags behind new forms of these crimes. Understanding the development of these phenomena is important for us in order to understand the existing legal regulations and to be able to distinguish illegal from legal business operations. 7 Following the Austro-Hungarian criminal legislation, our legislation developed in parallel, and we could say that the economic criminal law regulation was of a modern character until 1939. Ten years later, there was a break in criminal law continuity, and a new form of economic criminal law was developed within the SFRY, which did not recognize private property . This form of legislation functioned quite well in the socialist system, but after the independence of the Republic of Croatia and the transition to a market economy, criminal law legislation lagged behind the development of economic crimes. Economic criminal law still included some forms of criminal offenses that previously belonged primarily to official criminal offenses. This was the weight that still burdens the domestic judiciary through ongoing cases. Because when we finally got a modern form of economic criminal law that distinguishes private from state property and official crimes from "real" economic crimes, doubts arose in practice about how to resolve indictments brought under earlier criminal laws in which these differences were not the clearest. Criminal law theory had no doubts when our legislator prescribed the criminal offense of breach of trust in economic operations from Art. 246 of the CC based on the German "Untreue" from Art. 266 StGB. However, the criminal law practice decided to go the other way, claiming that damage is not essential for the existence of this criminal act. Such conclusions led us to legal uncertainty, which was also confirmed by the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia on this issue. By studying the judicial practice, other problems were observed which actually continue on the mentioned problem. There is primarily the issue of an accomplice who does not have the capacity of a responsible person as required by the legal description of this criminal act. Namely, in order for someone to be a responsible person in a legal entity, it is primarily necessary that he is obliged to take care of the property interests of the legal entity he represents. The practice here wrongly resolves cases in which such a responsible person, as an accomplice, obtains a benefit for his legal entity. Comparative legal solutions offered by similar Slovenian criminal law and court practice will be considered, and the solution offered by legislation from Great Britain will also be presented. This will provide an answer to the two fundamental hypotheses of this paper. Last but not least, the paper will also explain certain emerging forms of economic crime that arose in the territory of the Republic of Croatia as a result of the implemented transition and privatization process, and which have been present in domestic economic crime for decades. These forms of economic crime, apart from being interesting in themselves, are also important for our understanding of the need for stricter punishment of more serious forms of economic 8 crimes, primarily the mentioned criminal offense of breach of trust in economic operations from Art. 246. CC. In the aforementioned part, it will be considered whether the relatively mild punishment of this criminal offense in its serious form is justified and whether the purpose of punishment for these criminal offenses would be completed by the introduction of a mandatory secondary fine or it should still remain at the optional level. For this purpose, and in order to clarify this hypothesis, the results of the research conducted in the form of interviews with practitioners through questionnaires will be presented.