Chantage
A chantage (from French chantage = blackmail) is the threat of revelations for the purpose of blackmail.
In German jurisprudence, it is important whether the threat of publication is unlawful or unlawful, for example in the context of a challenge under Section 123 BGB or in the case of coercion and extortion ( Section 240 , Section 253 StGB).
Threat of a press release
A press publication is subject to the protection area of freedom of expression according to Article 5, Paragraph 1, Sentence 1 of the Basic Law. Therefore, the question of whether the person threatening to inform the press is using a lawful or an illegal means must also be assessed in the light of this fundamental right. The freedom of expression of the threatening person must be weighed against the general personal rights of the threatened person on a case-by-case basis .
In principle, true statements, even if they are disadvantageous for the person concerned, are to be accepted in any case if they do not affect the intimate, private or confidential sphere. A media campaign in the run-up to or on the edge of a legal dispute is also permitted within the limits of the protection of honor. The publication of true facts is only permissible, however, if the defamation of the person through defamatory criticism is not in the foreground. In the case of a contribution to a question that significantly affects the local public, a presumption speaks in favor of the permissibility of free speech, even in the case of sharp criticism.
Similarly, in a press release in July 2003, the Federal Prosecutor's Office announced that it would not proceed against the then Hamburg Interior Senator Ronald Schill for coercing the First Mayor Ole von Beust : According to the case law of the Federal Supreme Court, it could be expected that members of the government could withstand such attacks and then with political means react. The threatened publication that Beust had brought his alleged life partner, Justice Senator Roger Kusch, into the Senate and thus merged private and official matters, lacked the “special weight” and “the specific coercive effect that could endanger the state”.
Threat of criminal charges
If a blackmailer threatens to reveal compromising facts (blackmailing of silence, "chantage"), namely with a criminal complaint because of a crime committed by the blackmail victim, and if the blackmailer defends himself or even kills the blackmailer, then in the literature the requirement of self-defense is denied or by assumed a restriction of the right to self-defense due to reduced interest in probation. The blackmail's interest in protection against disclosure of a criminal offense does not deserve unlimited protection.
literature
- Josef Reinhold: The Chantage . Treatises of the criminology seminar at the University of Berlin, 1909.
- Henning Ernst Müller : For self-defense in the event of extortion from silence (chantage). NStZ 1993, pp. 366-368.
Web links
- Arno Lampmann: Deliver the goods or I will notify you! The need to enforce civil claims (chantage) October 29, 2009
- Arno Lampmann: Money or a criminal complaint! (Chantage II) December 14, 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chantage duden.de, accessed on June 21, 2016
- ↑ BGH, judgment of April 19, 2005 - X ZR 15/04 margin no. 31 ff., 35 ff.
- ↑ BVerfG, decision of December 17, 2002, NJW 2003, 1109
- ↑ BGH, judgment of November 16, 2004 - VI ZR 298/03, NJW 2005, 279
- ↑ Schill discharge: Mud battle over Beust's sexuality Der Spiegel , August 19, 2003
- ↑ BGH, judgment of February 12, 2003 - 1 StR 403/02 margin no. 38
