The offense of offering, giving, soliciting or accepting an undue advantage in exchange for the exertion of a person's real or supposed influence over a public official's decision, distinguished from ordinary bribery in that the person being paid is not the official making the decision but a third party claiming the ability to sway it. It is recognized as an offense under the Council of Europe's Criminal Law Convention on Corruption and under the United Nations Convention against Corruption, addressing the use of lobbyists, fixers and well connected intermediaries to corruptly influence official decisions without a direct payment ever passing to the decision maker.
Facts
Typical PenaltyIn Argentina, a comparable corruption and influence peddling conviction (former vice president Amado Boudou, 2018) carried a sentence of five years and ten months in prison 1 Notable ExampleFormer French president Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and influence peddling in March 2021 and sentenced to three years in prison, two suspended and one to be served under house arrest 1 Jurisdiction VariationTrading in influence is punishable as a crime in Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom 1 Classification
Offense GradeSerious or Indictable Offense 1 Connections
Associated With
Trading in influence is a form of political corruption, named directly in Interpol's own stated broad mandate.
Source Interpol (Wikipedia)
Has Offense Grade
Entity-backed identity for the offense-grade enum value this offense already carries, resolved to a crime concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The offense-grade fact itself stays on the offense unchanged.
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Influence peddling (Wikipedia)
Jurisdictional variation section
It is punishable as a crime in Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Notable examples section, France
Sarkozy was convicted in March 2021 for corruption and influence peddling. He was sentenced to three years in prison, with two years suspended and one year to be served under house arrest.
Notable examples section, Argentina
In 2018, Boudou was convicted of corruption and sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in prison.
View the SourceInterpol (Wikipedia)
Associated With: Interpol, Operating procedures sectionQuote, Associated With: Interpol, Operating procedures section
Its broad mandate covers virtually every kind of crime, including crimes against humanity, child pornography, drug trafficking and production, political corruption, intellectual property infringement, as well as white-collar crime.
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