CORRUPTION OFFENCES IN A COMPARATIVE LAW DOGMATIC PERSPECTIVE

In order to understand corruption offences the civil law perspective is not very useful, because in this perspective an offence is necessarily the infringement of a good as a material utility dependent on a wrongful conduct. The criminal offence however is primarily a meaningful action, a disappointing behaviour, and not primary and necessary the impairment of a material utility that also can not be present. The dynamic of criminal law may be understood only at the level of the significance of the act and not at the level of the individual benefit or damage. As far as the criminal law is concerned, that what is decisive, is the objective significance of the behaviour of the defendant in the social context. The act of corruption means that the offender does not adhere to a "public" role and that he falls into the "private" role of exchange or trade. The public officer, who is "bribed", disregards this separation between his private roles and his public role. He falls back into a more primitive role, the "private law" role of trade and exchange. Corruption - even in the "private" sphere - has always to do with managing an "institution" and neglecting the interest of the institution in favour of the "private" interest of the offender of exchange or trade. The significance of the various types of corruption, particularly the corruption without and with “damage”. The paper deals with the problem of the extortion in office and the new "quasi" extortion in the office of the Italian Penal Code and it deals also with the relationships between corporate corruption and Criminal bankruptcy. Regarding the relationship between law and moral, the paper affirms that moral in social, i.e. in the objective or external sense, is to be understood as a flanking norm system, as an informal norm system, side by side to the formal norm system, namely the legal or law system. Law and moral live side by side, and they can not live together for long periods in mutual contradiction. This also means that the function of moral should also be seen as a pioneer or forerunner of the law, i.e. like a preparation of legal changes. www.contabilita-pubblica.it Dottrina www.contabilita-pubblica.it 17/07/