Like wildfire, a video has circulated in recent hours showing a Tunisian police officer receiving a bribe from a driver who violated traffic rules, prompting the General Directorate of the National Guard of the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior to arrest him and open an investigation into the accident. .
A spokesman for the General Directorate of the National Guard said in a statement posted yesterday on its official Facebook page that “based on what was circulated on communication sites that a traffic police officer received a bribe in the performance of his official duty, and in view of the seriousness of what he had committed, he was summoned to court.” On September 29, 2022, a criminal case was initiated and he was suspended from work.
Some of them demand punishment for those who documented the incident!
The video, in which the owner of the car documented the details of the operation and filmed it with a hidden camera, captures the moment the officer received the bribe she paid him in exchange for not applying the fine for violating the law. and for exceeding the speed limit on the road.
Although the footage has sparked widespread controversy among Tunisians, among those who denounced the persistence of bribery in the security sector, calling on the Ministry of the Interior to crack down on corrupt officials and bring them to justice, and among those who denounced the filming and publication of the incident as being against the law and insulting the family of the accused and the special services.
Bribe “Box of shampoo”
It is noteworthy that this is not the first time that cases of bribery are recorded on public roads, in which the security forces are involved. About two months ago, the security forces detained a police officer after the distribution of a video recording the moment when he received a bribe from a citizen in the person of a “shampoo box” !
Many Tunisians believe that the security service is the most corrupt apparatus in the country. A study prepared by the Tunisian Association of Public Observers in partnership with the National Center for Provincial Courts and published last February showed that the most corrupt sectors are the security sector with 50 %, then the security sector. Health care by 20%.
Tunisia is ranked 70th in the world and sixth in the Arab world in the 2021 Corruption Index published by Transparency International with 44 points.
