Corporations exist to move liability from the owners to the company, not as a way to escape liability, which seems to be your proposal. Your argument seems to be that so long as people pass through a company quickly enough, there's no long-term liability for the company?

The company must maintain the liabilities of its history. If a refining company dumped waste directly into the ground, then 30+ years later it should still be held responsible for clean up, even if all of the people involved have retired. Otherwise, who is responsible for the cleanup?

Or, suppose that we find that Disney had illegally acquired the copyrights and trademarks to Mickey Mouse from Person X. All of the people involved are long dead, though the inheritors of the estate of Person X were successful in their lawsuit. Under your view, it seems that the inheritors could not sue Disney because none of the people now at Disney committed the original crime. That's an absurd conclusion.

There are a number of reasons for prosecuting, from punishing wrong doing to discourage overs, to getting compensation, to punishing the people who have done wrong.

You seem to think only one of these exists.

When you prosecute a company, you're penalizing the owners, not the employees. If there's a judgment against IBM, it's likely that nobody who works there will lose their job. Certainly, nobody will go to jail. Instead, the company will make less money, which may push the stock price down.

Most significantly, going forward, corporations will weigh the potential costs of litigation against the profit of doing business with regimes committing crimes against humanity. Which is what we want.

Then they shouldn't retain the patents, copyrights, cash, or any of the other assets. If corporations want the benefits of immortality, they need to accept the drawbacks.

Nonsense.

If the company signed a 100-year lease 30 years ago, should it no longer have to honor it?

If the company agreed to pay pensions to its employees 30 years ago, should it get to stop paying them?

If the CEO of Chrysler retires, can I stop paying the loan on my car?

The point of a corporation is that it's a durable entity (NOT a person, but a person is a good analogy much of the time). That's why corporations can own property, be insured, get loans from the bank, and otherwise enter into contracts -- because there will be an entity there tomorrow that will be accountable for those transactions -- regardless of who owns its shares or who is on the payroll.