Political crime is a wide-spread type of violation in the world where power of politicians is limited only by the scope of law and their own conscience. In fact, there are two major categories of political crime, which will be further reviewed in the current paper. State crimes involve officials who are in charge of power and abuse it in one or another way for the sake of personal or corporate benefit, while oppositional political crimes are committed against political institutions, bodies of power or code of political rules.
Political corruption can be named to be the most widely-spread type of state corruption which officials commit. As New York Times reported in October 2012, “José Dirceu de Oliveira e Silva, right, a former presidential chief of staff, has been charged with orchestrating a vote-buying scheme at the heart of the corruption scandal”. The case was unprecedented in Brazil, known for its corruption in courts and government. Although the former president did not confess of his role in the scandal, other twenty five officials, who were directly involved in the scheme, were announced guilty of accepting money as bribes in exchange of their votes. The main motivation for the crime was lobbying interests of certain pro-presidential groups, and so public money was directed to sponsor bribes that would ensure positive voting outcome for legislature. This case can be treated as a turning point in Brazilian history of political crimes because for the first time such a large group of high-rank people were charged at the state level. Because of this the case was widely covered by the local and international media, as this case gave hope for democratization of Brazilian legislative and judicial system.
Another example of a political crime may be referred to the oppositional type of a crime. As all oppositional political crimes can be classified into violent and non-violent ones, it should be noticed that there has been a growing trend of terrorism in recent decades, which can be obviously referred to violent oppositional crimes. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of examples, and one does not have go too far in the past. Thus, year 2012 brought about a number of such incidents, most of which are related with Islamic terrorism. Thus, for instance, Iraq was the place for terror attacks and suicide bombings several types, one of the most outrageous cases of which was suicide bombing in June, 2012 in the capital, Bagdad. In the residence of Shi’ite Endowment, twenty six people were killed and about two hundred were injured. Although formally this crime can be referred to as a religious one, it should be borne in mind that Shi’ite Endowment is an organization, that is controlled by the state. Thus, the main targets of the terrorists were people who were pro-government. The basis of this fight is generally fight for power and state control in Iraq, so Al Qaeda-run attacks aimed at destabilizing peace in the region, which would probably ease their way to power. As Reuters reports, “Many Sunni and Kurdish leaders say they fear Maliki is shoring up Shi’ite power by sidelining them from power-sharing agreements. But Maliki supporters say his critics have long obstructed the work of his government to try to wrestle more concessions from the Shi’ite leader”.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the above-mentioned political crimes can be the most typical ones in today’s world. While corruption is the main threat to state from inside, terrorism is a global problem that undermines stability in the world. Both oppositional and state crimes are dangerous, yet oppositional crimes appear to be more violent nowadays, while state crimes are mostly based on corruption, power and corporate interests.