[Physicians--victims or promoters of corruption?].

According to the media the recent physician bribery scandal in Germany draws ever further sets. The public prosecutor determines against hospital physicians and coworkers of a pharmaceutical firm. The suspicion: Physicians were recompensed for using up medicines particularly with pleasure trips. Which is qualified in Germany regularly as bribery and advantage grant as well as aid for tax evasion, is punishable in Austria as unfaithfulness, gift acceptance as well as bribery. The following contribution lights up--from Austrian view--the criminal page of the narrow burr between permitted sponsoring and undue corruption in the medicine. Bribery is globally punishable in Austria. Allowances to physicians can be for the payee in particular gift acceptance (section 153a StGB) or gift acceptance by leading employees of a public enterprise (section 305 StGB), for the giver in particular bribery (section 307 StGB). Occasional allowances, which are not located in connection to a concrete business, but only promoted the sympathetic consideration of the recipient, are not usually punishable. The punishing frameworks for offensces reach up to three years imprisonment. In addition still the absorption of enriching comes (section 20 StGB).