Corruption Reintroduction Act

[EATB]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT

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A BILL TO

AMEND THE CRIMINAL CODE TO REINTRODUCE CORRUPTION AS AN INDICTABLE OFFENCE

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The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:
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PART I — PRELIMINARIES

1. Short Title and Enactment
(1) This Act may be cited as the 'Corruption Reintroduction Act’

(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.

(3) This Act has been authored by Representative EATB and Speaker of the House xXTheoryXx.

(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Speaker of the House xXTheoryXx.

(5) This Act amends the following acts:
(a) Criminal Code Act

2. Reasons and Intent

(1) The previous replacement of the "Corruption" charge with "Abuse of Power" inadvertently creates legal loopholes allowing officials to exploit discretionary powers for personal gain, provided they strictly follow procedural law or obtain a protective legal opinion.

(2) Reintroducing the "Corruption" offence closes the "Lawful Discretion" loophole by properly focusing on the unethical intent and result of an action, such as gaining an unfair advantage, rather than solely focusing on procedural legality.

(3) To effectively criminalise cronyism and self-enrichment, ensuring that all government employees and officials are held to the highest ethical standards of the Commonwealth.

(4) To replace the current "Abuse of Power" offence entirely with a robust "Corruption" offence, eliminating prosecutorial ambiguity.

PART II — AMENDMENTS TO THE CRIMINAL CODE ACT

3. Reintroduction of the Corruption Offence

(1) Section 1 of PART II: PROPER ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNMENT of the Criminal Code Act shall be amended as follows:

"1 - Abuse of Power
Offence Type: Indictable
Penalty: Up to 500 Penalty Units; Up to 2 months disqualification from public office
A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) exercises any power, function, or duty vested in them by virtue of their position as members of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches, or employee of a government agency, in contravention of the law; and
(b) either:
(i) knows that the exercise of power is unlawful; or
(ii) acts with reckless disregard as to whether the exercise of power is lawful.
It is a defence to a charge under this section if the person:
(c) made a good faith mistake as to the lawfulness of their conduct; or
(d) sought legal advice in good faith from a competent legal practitioner prior to exercising the power and reasonably relied on that advice.
Relevant Law:

1 - Corruption
Offence Type: Indictable
Penalty: Up to 500 Penalty Units; Up to 2 months disqualification from public office
A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) knowingly uses a government position, influence, or government resources to gain an advantage, benefit, or privilege for oneself or another, knowing that such benefit is not legitimately available by virtue of their role; or
(b) knowingly engages in self-enrichment, cronyism, or self-dealing by conferring benefits, appointments, contracts, or assets to themselves, friends, or associates, whilst utilising government resources and office, where no legitimate, objective, and fair basis exists for doing so; or
(c) exercises their lawful discretionary authority with the primary intent of securing a personal, financial, or other benefit for themselves or a specific third party, rather than serving the public interest, knowing that such exercise is not in the public interest.

This offence does not occur where:
(d) The advantage gained is a standard, publicly available benefit incidental to their role, such as a standard government salary, UBI, or routine compensation or commission not in contravention of existing statute.

It is a defence to a charge under this section if the person:
(e) sought legal advice in good faith from a competent legal practitioner prior to acting and reasonably relied on that advice, provided that such advice was not obtained with the intent of circumventing this offence.
Relevant Law:"

 

[Franciscus]

Veto

Much of this bill is good. I do think that we should reintroduce corruption as a crime, and I think that the current abuse of power crime is a bit ill-defined. That being said, the way that this bill has chosen to do so overcomplicated things and has ensnared basically the entire hiring practices of the Commonwealth because it requires all appointments to be made on an objective basis on pain of criminal punishment.

Redmont is not a place that has civil service tests. When hiring people, departments do not have the ability to take objective metrics and scores, place them together, and then come up with a hiring decision based on a rubric. Because this bill would criminalize overnight "conferring... appointments..." when no "legitimate, objective, and fair basis" exists, this bill would criminalize wherever legitimate and fair but subjective criteria are used to make a final decision ("And" does not mean "or"). For example, not assigning someone supervisory positions when they have a tendency to explode at others on slight disagreement is legitimate and fair, but we don't really have an objective way of tracking this; departments are not going about their business by quantifying personal explosiveness and emotional intelligence of their employees, but would need to do that if they want to consider those factors under this new law.

Subjective criteria are important. Cultural fit, the ability to work with others, and emotional intelligence generally are all inherently subjective measures. They are things that many departments consider, and (absent implementation of rigorous civil service exams overnight), we don't actually have the tools to make hiring on purely objective metrics. And I don't think we want to move to a civil service exam model; the more barriers we throw up to hiring, the fewer people we will yield.

While the goal of the bill is good, I would suggest that the Congress return the definition to as it was prior to the Public Authority Offences and Defences Amendment Act. That is to say, restoring the crime of corruption as:

A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) uses a government position to gain an unfair advantage for oneself or another, inconsistent with official duty.

When we make a complex criminal law, we must ensure that we are not stretching beyond what we mean to criminalize. Otherwise, we risk criminalizing routine, benign, or even beneficial activities.

This bill is so vetoed.