The foundations of this dual presumption are rooted in the rulings of this court from the 1970s, in which it was held that, as a rule, a public servant should be placed under the presumption that he knows that "those in need of his services" do not give him gifts – but rather in order to be gracious to them in the performance of his duties (Criminal Appeal 763/77 in Riga v. State of Israel, IsrSC 32(2) 824, 826 (1978); Criminal Appeal 621/78 Yosef Assa v. State of Israel, IsrSC 33(1) 75, 79 (1978); See also the words of Justice A. Goldberg inCriminal Appeal 4148/96 State of Israel v. Ganot, IsrSC 50(5) 367, 377 (1996) (hereinafter: the Ganot case), according to which "with respect to any giving that is not of a trivial value [...] there is a presumption that it creates an obligation on the part of the recipient towards the giver"). When this presumption is fulfilled, the burden shifts to the defendant to raise reasonable doubt in order to "collapse the assumption" underlying the presumption (Allegrissi, para. 15). The contradiction of the presumption therefore depends on the existence of an alternative explanation for the granting of the benefit (paragraph 79 of the judgment of Justice N. Sohlberg in the second charge in the Bar case). Moreover, the court must refrain from stretching the applicability of the presumption indefinitely and be careful not to trap in the criminal law a person whose actions are not equivalent to the disgrace of taking a bribe (the Bar case, paragraph 40 of the judgment of Justice N. Sohlberg on the fourth charge; the Lupoliansky case, paragraph 99 of my judgment).
I will add that section 293 of the Penal Law, entitled "Methods of Bribery", states, inter alia, that it does not matter if the bribe was in favor of a particular action or in order to bias in general.
- The offense of theft by a public servant is set forth in section 390 of the Penal Law, and it reads as follows:
"A public servant who steals something that is the property of the state or something that came into his possession by virtue of his work, and the value of which exceeds 1,000 new shekels, shall be sentenced to ten years in prison."