He who deliberately creates an environment or conditions in order to provoke the offering, giving or taking of bribe with the purpose to damage the one who gives or takes the bribe, shall be punished for a provocation to bribe by a prison sentence of up to three years.
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- The provision creates an obvious legal solidarity between the person giving the bribe and the official accepting it. It proclaims an equality of fortunes between the two, a joint liability for the bribe. It is a reassurance to the corrupt official that the person offering and giving the bribe cannot be a pretender because a pretender is also punished.
- The moral of art.307 is that the bribe business should be serious and reliable even at the stage of negotiations. It rules out the embarrassment of a corrupt civil servant that the bribe offer could be a trap. No such fear and uncertainty. It is the corner stone of the Bulgarian legal shield on top corruption.
- Art. 307 must be abolished just for the sake of creating an atmosphere of insecurity for the officials taking bribes. They will always fear that the person offering or giving the bribe may be a pretender aiming to expose them. The sense of such fear and uncertainty will be increased after one or two convictions of officials bribed by pretenders.
- This is an acid test for the allocation of teams for and against corruption and in some way it will play the role of King Solomon’s story about identifying the mother. The defense of art.307 will simply be fierce. Have you ever heard of a EU/US source challenging art. 307?
- The above concept has first been voiced in late 2005 by Mr. Marin Markovsky, a member of the Sofia Bar Association.
March 2006
Braykov’s Legal Office