Abuse of office (Germany)

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The classic abuse of office no longer exists as an individual criminal offense in Germany. The provision of Section 339 of the Criminal Code (old version) was included in the Reich Criminal Code of May 15, 1871 as an abuse of office . Paragraph 1 reads: "A civil servant who unlawfully compels someone to act , tolerate or omit to act , tolerate or fail to act through abuse of his official authority or by threatening to abuse his authority , will be punished with prison."

This official offense was in the Third Reich on the basis of the decree of the Führer on special powers of the Reich Minister of Justice of August 20, 1942 by Art. 10 lit. b, final provision p. 1 of the (First) Ordinance on the Alignment of Criminal Law of the Old Reich and the Alpine and Danube Reichsgaue (Criminal Law Adjustment Ordinance ) of May 29, 1943 to June 15, 1943, repealed without replacement by Reich Minister of Justice Otto Georg Thierack ; there it said: "Section 339 of the Reich Criminal Code will be deleted". Since then, abuse of office has not been re-included in the German Criminal Code as an individual criminal offense.

However, the German Criminal Code makes certain individual official offenses in § 174b and § 258a StGB as well as in the thirtieth section ( §§ 331 to 358 StGB) a criminal offense.

A remainder of the abuse of office became effective as of April 1, 1998 through Article 1 No. 46 Letter b of the Sixth Law on the Reform of Criminal Law (6th StrRG) of January 26, 1998 in the form of the new Paragraph 4 of Section 240 StGB - Coercion - reintroduced into the Criminal Code, but with very limited effect. Coercion is the unlawful coercion, toleration or omission, associated with violence or the threat of a sensitive evil.

In addition, there are two special criminal offenses of abuse of office through Section 353 of the Criminal Code - overdue taxes , reduction in benefits - in which the public official is only punished if he has committed the illegal official act (the illegal collection of taxes for a public fund without them at all or only in lower amount or the unlawful reduction of state benefits) for his personal benefit, whereas the unlawful official act to the advantage of the state and thus to the disadvantage of the person directly affected by the official act remains unpunished.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RGBl. P. 127, entered into force on January 1, 1872
  2. ↑ The Fuehrer's decree on special powers of attorney for the Reich Minister of Justice of August 20, 1942
  3. ↑ RGBl. I 1943, pp. 339-341 (number 57 of June 1, 1943), full text .
  4. ↑ BGBl. I, pp. 164/177.

literature

Gerhard Wolf: Liberation of the criminal law from National Socialist thinking? , 9-1996 HFR 1996, pp. 52-63.