The Infeasibility of Extending the Benefits of Plea Bargaining to Acts of Administrative Misconduct

Abstract

The Federal Constitution mandates the punishment of those who commit acts of administrative misconduct. In order to comply with this constitutional provision, Law No. 8,429/1992 established the legal nature of administrative misconduct actions and the impossibility of settlement, agreement, or conciliation in actions arising from unlawful acts. Law No. 12,850/2013, in turn, introduced significant innovations into the legal system by providing a detailed framework for organized crime and regulating plea bargaining as a means of obtaining evidence, in accordance with the United Nations Conventions of Mérida and Palermo, which, at the international level, recognize this mechanism as a tool to combat corruption.

Within the sphere of criminality, certain offenses are carried out through acts of the State. These include acts of administrative misconduct committed by public agents or third parties within the context of criminal organizations; such macro-criminality, characterized by corruption, demands State intervention. This study seeks to demonstrate the impossibility of extending the criminal benefits of plea bargaining—an instrument inherent to organized crime—to acts of administrative misconduct, due to the legal prohibition established by the Administrative Misconduct Law, in light of the Federal Constitution.

The methodology adopted consists of content analysis, conducted through documentary review—particularly of international conventions—comparative analysis with Brazilian legislation, and a specific bibliographic review on the subject.