Few questions at the intersection of criminal law and corporate law are as controversially debated as those concerning the conditions under which the harmful reduction of corporate assets by the managing director, despite the consent of the shareholders, should be regarded as embezzlement. The structure and orientation of German capital protection law also provide reason to consider the criminal sanctioning of distributions from the liability fund of the GmbH. In appropriately differentiating the scope of shareholder consent to harmful measures, it is not always sufficiently taken into account whether embezzlement is indeed the doctrinally correct starting point for criminal assessment. Ultimately, stronger arguments suggest that culpable transfers of corporate assets into private wealth should be addressed not through embezzlement protection, but rather through insolvency criminal law.