Complicity is a share in somebody else's wrongdoing. Complicity in the crime, tacit complicity, deny any complicity.
It does not require doing anything: complicity can be knowing and staying silent, which is why the word is used so much of institutions. The Latin behind it means folded together, the same root as complex.
1nouncomplicityA share in somebody else's wrongdoing.
“Several officials were accused of complicity in the smuggling of weapons.”
complicity is a sharing.
Latin complex means a partner, from com-, together, plus plicare, to fold. Complex shares the root.
Latin
complic-
Old French
complice — accomplice
French
complicité
English, today
complicity
Built from
From French complicité, from Middle French -, from Old French complice (“accomplice”), from Latin complic-, stem of complex (“partner, confederate”), from Latin complicō (“fold together”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA