Oh, pull the other one, for God's sake!
It's not a bribe. Bribes are paid up ahead. It's a thank-you, because thank-yous are paid after the event.
“The legal position in Malta is that the crime of bribery does not happen after but before the deed.”
– Noel Arrigo’s defence counsel, in court today
There’s a limit to how much you can equivocate before you make yourself ridiculous. Yes, we all know that bribery takes place before the event and not afterward, and not just in oh-so-special-and-different Malta. It’s inherent in the meaning of the word.
Ah, but here’s the thing. The act of bribery need not constitute payment before. A promise made before the delivery of a ‘favour’, for payment afterward, is also a bribe. You don’t have to be paid up front to be bribed. You can be promised payment afterward, and it’s still a bribe.
With the defence counsel’s line of thinking, all the corrupt people in this country can tell their corrupters: ‘Oh, no, please pay me after I deliver, and that way it’s not a bribe.’
Come off it.
The former chief justice and his defence counsel are trying to twist the meaning of something that is as old as time: bribery. If there isn’t payment up ahead – or at least a deposit (don’t make me laugh) – then it isn’t bribery.
Halli joqoghdu jilaghbuha tal-vergni ftit iehor, bir-rosary ring fuq subajh il-qorti u l-penis rings go d-delivery van ta’ NM Arrigo. You’d think that Noel Arrigo and his defence counsel have spent their entire lives in a monastery (ratcheting up multifarious confessors) and that in their naive world, there are no bribes which consist of promising something up ahead, with payment after the favour is delivered.
Who do they think they’re kidding? That’s how all the really big bribe-jobs take place: with payment afterward, and not before. It’s the small bribes that get paid up ahead: the tenner slipped between the licensing documents so that they’re processed faster; the twenty pounds to the driving examiner to mark you as ‘passed’, that kind of thing. But the big things? Oh no. First you deliver, and then you get paid.
That much is obvious. Nobody is going to give you big money unless they are 100% sure that you won’t run off with the money and leave them standing, favour undelivered, when they don’t have a receipt and can’t take you to court. Sure, they can put a bomb on your doorstep and exact sweet revenge, but they’ll still be minus their money and their favour.
X’pajjiz tan-n**k. No wonder we ended up with a penis-ring-selling live Benny Hill freak show as chief justice. Why am I not surprised.
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Once the envelope with the dosh hit the boardroom table and was not chucked back in the face of the school buddy but remained there, then “ergo” as the denizens of the law courts spout, it was accepted.
Were the three confessors aware that their penitent’s company is the Malta agent for Durex? That would have got their conscience in a twist.
Your last para says it all.
I think the defence raised this argument because if a bribe *must* include a promise beforehand (if not a payment), then the prosecution must prove that there was this promise. Otherwise there is no proof that what he accepted was a bribe and not a thank you (for which there is no law against). If the judge buys this line of thinking, then he will not be able to convict without the proof of said promise.
[Daphne – The bribe is implicit in the ‘thank-you’. Nobody thanks people unless there is something for which they should be thanked. Especially, nobody is going to give you an envelope with a large amount of money as thanks unless you have done something to get it. Funny, but there’s nobody chucking envelopes full of cash onto my desk and saying ‘thanks’ for something I haven’t done.]
Your reasoning is correct, and the fact that he accepted the thank-you makes it patently obvious that there was the promise beforehand.
My point is that the defence’s strategy is cunning in that while there is proof of the thank-you part, there’s no proof of the initial promise. Technically – this is not a bribe as described at law.
Yes, he accepted a bribe (We know it, he knows it, even the judge knows it). Yes his antics (rosary ring and all) are ridiculous and shameful. But my comment was on the strategy that the defence opted for, rather than what’s obvious.
As far as I know (though I may be mistaken – I’m not a lawyer) a judge cannot convict on what’s obvious. There must be proof that he promised to change the sentence in exchange for cash.
[Daphne – He had seven years to plan and orchestrate all this. No wonder the prosecutor exploded in court. You could smell that rat (no, not Arrigo) when he chose not to have a jury trial. He knew he’d go down like a sack of punctured condoms.]
Ian, David Mills was found guilty of taking a bribe even though there was no evidence of a promise made before he perjured himself in a trial against Berlusconi. Mills received the £350,000 reward about a year ‘after the event’, as lawyers like to say.
[Daphne – http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/17/david-mills-silvio-berlusconi-trial%5D
David Mills received his gift AFTER perjuring himself on Berlusconi’s behalf.
Noel Arrigo deserves every word you said, but I think you should lay off the defence counsel. He is only trying to do the best job he can with the poor material at his disposal.
That’s the way the system works.