Candies and coffee offered to doctors constitute bribes? Where politeness ends and the criminal record begins

The situation in Vâlcea seems taken from an absurd movie. Two patients ended up in court after leaving boxes of candy or coffee with the attending physician, and a female driver was sent to court for offering a policewoman, a former colleague, 30 eggs to speed up the discovery of car information. Although the prosecutor in the case considered the facts extremely serious and requested a year and 4 months in prison with suspension, the judges rejected the plea agreements. The magistrates' decision, which is not yet final, opens a necessary debate: where do we draw the line between traditional Romanian politeness and the crime of bribery?

Hospital searches. PHOTO: Inquam Photos / Octav Ganea

Lawyer Cristian Ene explains that the criminal law does not impose a minimum value threshold to consider an asset as a bribe. However, the essence of the crime does not lie in the price of the gift, but in the conditional connection between its offering and the professional act.

In the Vâlcea case, the court rejected the validation of the agreement not because of the derisive value of the goods, but because the constitutive elements of the crime were missing. The lawyer details the legal mechanism:

“There is no value limit per se, because the patrimonial value is not necessarily the object of the bribe. It can also be a non-patrimonial value. (…) The court rejected the validation of the agreement, but not because of the value of the asset, but because the constituent elements of the crime of bribery were not met. It was the case of a person who went to the doctor and, when he left, left a chocolate on the desk. There was no agreement with the doctor that that chocolate be offered in exchange for the act medical”, explained Cristian Ene for “Adevărul”.

The lawyer points out the major difference between a unilateral gesture and an illicit transaction. If the doctor does not see the gesture or there is no prior agreement, the act does not meet the criminal conditions.

“If the patient had said, 'Look, doctor, for treating me, you have a chocolate here,' and the doctor had accepted and said, 'Thank you,' and this had been recorded, then we would be talking about bribery. Conversely, if the doctor says to the patient, 'Health!' and the patient, without the doctor seeing, leaves a coffee, a chocolate or a carton of eggs before leaving, this does not mean that the doctor was aware of this gesture or that there is a connection with the medical act. For this reason, the case was rejected, not for the value of the property itself”the lawyer stated.

The dilemma of the martișor: between a symbolic gesture and a diamond

The line becomes even finer when the subjective interpretation of the investigators comes into play. The lawyer Cristian Ene offers the example of the martișor or the flowers, common gestures that can acquire criminal valences depending on the context and value.

“A bribe can have a symbolic value of 3 or 5 lei. But it can also be a bribe with a diamond, which costs ten thousand euros. From a legal point of view, both can be considered a bribe. The difference is that, in the case of the symbolic value, it is appreciated that it is a gesture that does not reach the level of a crime and the prosecution can be ordered to be waived. On the other hand, an asset of very high value is treated differently. Likewise in the case of flowers: one or two flowers are a trivial gesture, but if you bring a tree, a five thousand euro bonsai, things change”, explains the legal specialist.

Thus, everything remains at the discretion of the prosecutor, who must prove the direct connection with the duties of the service. Without this conscious connection on both sides, the accusation risks being, as happened in Vâlcea, rejected by the judges.

Psychologist Mihai Copăceanu: “Don't go empty-handed” – a cultural norm, not a criminal one

Beyond the legal aspect, these cases reveal a deep reality of Romanian society. Psychologist Mihai Copăceanu argues that the interpretation of these gestures exclusively through the key of corruption ignores an old cultural substrate. For many Romanians, “attention” is not a payment, but a form of relationship.

“There is a deep cultural substratum associated with these seemingly minor gestures, perceived as forms of politeness and known as “attentions”, whose role is to facilitate the building of a favorable and harmonious relationship between the citizen and the representative of the state institutions. These practices are not limited to the medical field, but are also found in the educational system, as well as in the local public administration”. says the psychologist.

Copăceanu draws attention to an extremely strong social belief, which functions almost like an unwritten law in the collective mind.

“In the collective mind of Romanians, a series of internalized social beliefs persist, such as the idea that “you can't show up empty-handed”, which function as informal, generalized and tacitly accepted socio-cultural norms. These norms are so well-rooted that deviation from them is perceived as inappropriate or even absurd. From this perspective, classifying these gestures as acts of corruption is considered an erroneous interpretation, since their material value is minuscule, and their significance is symbolic, not transactional,” he explains.

Moreover, the specialist warns that this behavior is learned from childhood, through imitation and encouragement from adults, which makes its eradication through punitive methods difficult and often misunderstood by the population.

“Under the appearance of innocence, adults transmit these practices to children from the first years of schooling, urging them to give gifts to teachers on the occasion of festive or ritualistic moments of the school year. Thus, the child internalizes this behavior as normative and appropriate, and will automatically reproduce it in adulthood. From a psychological point of view, this process contributes to the normalization of behavior both for the one who gives and for the one who receives, diminishing the perception of the moral or legal seriousness of the act”, concludes Mihai Copăceanu.