The doctor affiliated with the NHS who prescribes to patients drugs recommended by promoters of pharmaceutical companies for a fee, carries out a conduct attributable in the explanatory methods to the comparison and in terms of the agent's quality to the crime of corruption.
the Supreme Court annulled the sentence issued by the Court of Appeal of Florence on 2 October 1999 which had classified the conduct ascribed to healthcare workers, classifying them in the crime pursuant to art. 318 of the criminal code.
The Court, adopting the hermeneutical canon offered by the defense of the appellants, considered the classification of the facts in the case referred to in art. 318 of the criminal code considering them subsumable in the contravention case referred to in art. 123, Legislative Decree no. 219 of 2006.
The relationship between the contravention referred to in art. 123 "granting or promise of prizes or pecuniary advantages or in kind" and the provision pursuant to 170-172, RD July 27, 1934, n. 1265 is imposed according to the scheme of the necessarily progressive crime and postulates the application of the case which contains the specializing element: the purpose.
Indeed, even the case referred to in art. 318 of the Criminal Code contains a specializing element in terms of the quality of the agent, with respect to the crime of comparison, i.e. the quality of public officials covered by doctors.
On closer inspection, for the purpose of establishing the crime of own corruption, the Supreme Court held that the public official should frustrate the functions assigned to him, since only in this way could the violation of the duties of exclusive pursuit of public interests be considered integrated on the same burden.
