When Contractual Breach Becomes Corruption: Legal Boundaries of Criminal Liability in Lump-Sum Public Procurement
Abstract
This study examines the legal boundaries between contractual breach and criminal corruption in lump-sum public procurement. It addresses the tendency to transform deviations in contract performance, particularly alleged volume deficiencies, into findings of state financial loss and subsequently into grounds for criminal liability. Using a qualitative socio-legal approach with a doctrinal core, the study combines statutory, conceptual, and case-based analysis with an examination of institutional interpretations embedded in procurement audits and judicial reasoning. The findings demonstrate that contractual deviation, administrative irregularity, state financial loss, and criminal conduct constitute distinct categories of legal responsibility that should not be treated as automatically interchangeable. In lump-sum procurement, the application of volume-based assessment may generate legal misclassification when audit logic overrides the contractual structure and the legal characteristics of performance-based payment. The study proposes a Contract-to-Crime Boundary Framework that establishes sequential thresholds for distinguishing contractual, administrative, civil, and criminal liability. This framework constitutes the study's principal novelty by conceptualizing criminalization as an institutional process rather than an automatic consequence of procurement irregularities. The study recommends that socio-legal scholarship further examine how interactions among contractual practices, audit institutions, and criminal justice actors construct the legal meaning of corruption and shape the boundaries of criminal liability.
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