BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

The US e-mail fraud legislation is a good example of state policymaking to achieve both public and private sector conduct, employees and corporate directors who are not necessarily involved in the corrupt bribery, but are aimed at other long-term intentions (such as the exchange of favors). 30 It is very curious the warning, on this point, that makes Peter Henning: None of the Conventions address gratuities given to officials that are designed to seek future benefits unrelated to a specific exercise of authority, the form of corruption that involves influence buying.A related issue not addressed in the Conventions is the topic of political campaign contributions, and how corruption law should treat these payments that are designed to influence the exercise of official authority … While bribery is the most commonly identified form of public corruption, the offer and receipt of a gratuity is also a criminal offense that raises a difficult interpretive issue regarding the distinction between a bribe and a gift, and what types of gifts should rise to the level of a violation of the criminal law . 31 On the other hand, there is a paradox hitherto insurmountable on these themes, as David Hess and Thomas W. Dunfee recalls, namely: Scholars studying the corruption phenomenon have noted a unique paradox: corruption is universally disapproved yet universally prevalent . 32 How can this be? What correlation of forces and phenomena causes this paradox to occur? This also applies to one of the most common kinds of corruption that is bribery; because there is an absolutely negative outlook with regard to it, but nonetheless several Western countries are still reluctant to create efficient mechanisms to deal with it. 33 That is what we come to face. 30 This legislation establishes that there are two elements that characterize fraud by electronic mail: (i) post offices that have conceived or tried to conceal fraudulent schemes; (ii) the use of e-mail for the purpose of execution, or attempted execution of fraud. 31 HENNING, P. J.: Public corruption: a comparative analysis of international corruption conventions and united states law . Op. cit., p. 800. See the already classic text by NOONAN Jr., J. T.: Bribes: The Intellectual History of a Moral Idea . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p.23, noting that: The core of the concept of a bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised . 32 HESS, David; DUNFEE, T.W.: Fighting Corruption: a principled approach. In: Cornell International Law Review , No. 593, 595, 2000, p.33. See also the excellent text of KOFELE-KALE, N.: The Right to a Corruption-Free Society as an Individual and Collective Human Right: Elevating Official Corruption to a Crime under International Law. In The International Lawyer . Vol. 34, No. 1 (SPRING 2000), pp. 149-178. Published by American Bar Association, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40707514, accessed 2/27/2017. 33 AHLIN, C. R.; PINAKI, B.: Bribery, Inefficiency, and Bureaucratic Delay. In Journal of Development Economics. V. 84 (1). New York: Elsevier, 2007, pp. 465-486. See also the excellent text by SALBU, S. R.: Extraterritorial Restriction of Bribery: A Premature Evocation of the Normative Global Village. In Yale Journal of International Law , V. 24, 1999, accessed at http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1100&context=yjil, 02/20/2017. In this article, the author argues, with good arguments, that there are deep difficulties to accept certain corruptive practices as new forms of economic and political imperialisms.

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