Lithuania
,
Romania
,
Serbia
, and
Montenegro
.
Other countries of the ACN either have not provided information in this regard, or the theme of such training
sessions have not fully corresponded to the realities of our life. Based on this data, it would be useful to
significantly increase the activities for strengthening the capacity of the law enforcement agencies in the
region in the sphere of application of measures for confiscation of corruption assets and proceeds of money
laundering.
In the context of human and technical resources, an interesting amendment has been made to the Criminal
Procedure Code of
Croatia
. Thus, the Article 206.i of the Criminal Procedure Code requires, in case of
investigation of the crimes where the substantial pecuniary gains have been obtained, to unite the efforts of
financial investigators, advisers to the Prosecutor’s Offices, and the associate experts of the Special
Department of the Public Prosecutor’s Offices for the criminal assets search and recovery, in order to carry
out the immediate joint verification and get the evidence to freeze the assets. In these cases, the Public
Prosecutor shall request from the Chief of Police and the competent body of the Ministry of Finance to make
the staff members available to him; the staff members shall participate in the above joint investigations under
his supervision, and, during the period of investigation, shall follow the instruction of the Public Prosecutor
and be accountable to him for their performance. If the secondment of these officers is required, the Public
Prosecutor shall consult with the Police Office and the Ministry of Finance to that extent.
Most of the ACN countries consider the system of confiscation, existing in their counties, to be effective;
the factors, which have been mentioned as reasonable to be changed, the difficulties, which the competent
bodies face in practice, the legislative and practical concerns, and restrictions include: too long period of the
court proceedings, and high workload of the courts (Armenia and Croatia), poor efficiency of mechanisms
for international cooperation in cases on confiscation (Azerbaijan), insufficient quality and speed of
assistance from abroad in the tracing of assets (Georgia), when it is impossible or difficult to confiscate the
assets from the nominal owners (Armenia and Azerbaijan), difficulties in search and identification of the
assets (Slovenia), no criminal liability is imposed for unjustified enrichment, existence of banking secrecy,
absence of the specialised body for management of the frozen or confiscated assets (Azerbaijan), too short
period (three months) for freezing (Serbia), inadequate level of training of personnel of the competent bodies
(Lithuania), absence of clear legislative regulations in this sphere (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
It is very important, in the context of the confiscation measures application, to note that in accordance with
Article 18 of Preamble to Directive 2014/42/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 3 April
2014 on the freezing and confiscation of instrumentalities and proceeds of crime in the European Union,
during implementation of this Directive the Member States Member States may provide that, in exceptional
circumstances, confiscation should not be ordered, insofar as it would, in accordance with national law,
represent undue hardship for the affected person, on the basis of the circumstances of the respective
97
individual case which should be decisive. Member States should make a very restricted use of this possibility
and should only be allowed to provide that confiscation is not to be ordered in cases where it would put the
person concerned in a situation in which it would be very difficult for him to survive.
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