Embezzlement is a crime of embezzlement of a public asset or value by an employee who has access to them because of their function. It is a specific crime of the public servant (or equivalent) and it is an abuse of public trust.
It is provided for in Article 312 of the Brazilian Penal Code and falls within the crimes committed by public officials against the administration in general, which provides as follows:
"Appropriating the public official of money, valuables or any other movable property, public or private, which he has possession by reason of his position, or diverting it, for his own benefit or that of others."
Anyone who commits this type of crime is subject to imprisonment from 2 to 12 years and payment of a fine.
The crime of embezzlement can be subdivided into five categories provided for in the Penal Code: embezzlement-appropriation; embezzlement-deviation; embezzlement-theft; guilty embezzlement; and embezzlement through fraud (embezzlement-stealing).
The word derives from the Latin term
peculatus, which in Roman law was characterized as the diversion of goods belonging to the State.See also the meaning of misappropriation.