Athar Alrafedain

Abstract

Bribery is one of the serious corrupt practices from which the societies suffered from time immemorial to the present day, taking into consideration the consequences that lead to the destruction of the moral, social, and economical aspects of the society, to the extent that it became a general phenomenon in the daily activities, The texts and the related legal documents, although they were not available in sufficient quantity, showed the important role played by the ancient Iraqi kings and governors to stop this phenomenon and to pass legal judgments against those who were accused of practicing bribery, some of which attained to the penalty of death. Although the ancient written Iraqi laws concerning the subject of bribery made no mention of this phenomenon for reasons which we ignore, we understand from the items mentioned in Hammurabi's code law that practising bribery was forbidden and that the Iraqi legislator inflicted deterrent punishment on those who misused their administrative authorities and this is found under the items (5 ,33, and 34). In addition to that, king Hammurabi himself used to scrutinize the matters related to bribery and he expected that conniving at it and avoiding