Brussels, 12/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström presented a proposal for a directive on Monday 12 March, to enhance national measures for freezing and confiscating the assets of criminal gangs. The Commission proposes bringing into European rules temporary measures to freeze some assets even before the suspect has been found guilty. It also hopes to strengthen the rules that allow member states to confiscate assets that have been transferred from the suspect to a third party, a member of the family, for example, “who should have realised that they derive from crime”, a press release says.
The long-awaited legislative proposal seeks to hamper criminal organisations' means of funding and to reduce their profits. The Commission also wants to bring some order to what is done in member states, which each have their own ways of confiscating and using confiscated assets. In these areas, Italy and Ireland are often cited as good examples. Italy has legislation which goes beyond that of the other member states, Malmström said. Thanks to its administrative agency devoted to these tasks, Italy was able to temporarily freeze €800 million in 2009.
The amounts confiscated or frozen are mere drops in the ocean when compared with the real profits generated by criminal activities, the Commissioner said. According to UN estimates (no specifically European figures exist), the total amount of criminal proceeds generated in 2009 may have been approximately $2.1 trillion, or 3.6% of global GDP in that year. “While most of this dirty money is laundered and reinvested into the legal economy, currently less than 1% of the proceeds of crime are frozen and confiscated”, Malmström added. The proposed new rules will protect the legal economy from criminal infiltration, putting criminals behind bars being only part of the task, the commissioner said.
Under the terms of the proposal, clearer and more efficient rules will be laid down for confiscating assets “not directly linked to a specific crime, but which clearly result from similar criminal activities by the convicted person”; it will also be possible to confiscate assets where a criminal conviction is not possible because the suspect is dead, permanently ill or has fled. This provision already exists in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, says the Commission impact assessment, but not in Romania, which will have to amend its legislation.
National authorities will be able to take preventive measures with prosecutors able to temporarily freeze assets that risk disappearing if no action is taken, “subject to confirmation by a court”, the Commission says. Member states, through their asset recovery offices, will be required to manage frozen assets so that they do not lose economic value before they are eventually confiscated. The Commission also wants to ensure that actions taken to freeze and confiscate assets are balanced by strong measures to protect fundamental rights, in particular to ensure that individual's right to a presumption of innocence and the right to property are respected. It will not, however, tell member states how to use confiscated assets, that being a decision for each country. In the EU some states, the proceeds of crime are invested in the social and charity sector, others use them for law enforcement or crime prevention initiatives. Each of the 27 member states will be free to determine how they use these assets. The Commissioner also argued for increased police cooperation among EU countries, so that, for example, the Swedish police could confiscate criminal assets on the basis of a judgment delivered in another member state. (SP/transl.rt)