The British firm Bentley-Jennison, who provide Forensic
Accounting Services, add:
"In some cases the defendants will even have their assets
seized at the start of an investigation, before any charges
have been considered. In many cases the authorities will
assume that all of the assets held by the defendant are
illegally obtained as he has a "criminal lifestyle". It is
then down to the defendant to prove otherwise. If the
defendant is judged to have a criminal lifestyle then it
will be assumed that physical assets, such as properties
and motor vehicles, have been acquired through the use
of criminal funds and it will be necessary to present
evidence to contradict this.
The defendant's bank accounts will also be scanned for
evidence of spending and any expenditure on
unidentified assets (and in some cases identified assets)
is also likely to be included as alleged criminal benefit.
This often leads to the inclusion of sums from legitimate
sources and double counting both of which need to be
eliminated".
Under the influence of the post-September 11 United
States and the FATF (Financial Action Task Force on
Money Laundering), Canada, Australia, the United
Kingdom, Greece, South Korea, and Russia have similar
asset recovery and money laundering laws in place.
International treaties (for instance, the 1959 European
Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal
Matters, the 1990 Convention of the Council of Europe on
Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the
Proceeds from Crime (ETS 141), and The U.N.
Convention against Corruption 2003- UNCAC) and
European Union Directives (e.g., 2001/97/EC) allow the
seizure and confiscation of the assets and "unexplained
wealth" of criminals and suspects globally, even if their
alleged or proven crime does not constitute an offense
where they own property or have bank accounts.
This abrogation of the principle of dual criminality
sometimes leads to serious violations of human and civil
rights. Hitler could have used it to ask the United
Kingdom's Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) to confiscate
the property of refugee Jews who committed "crimes" by
infringing on the infamous Nuremberg race laws.
Only offshore tax havens, such as Andorra, Antigua,
Aruba, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Monaco, the
Netherlands Antilles, Samoa, St. Vincent, the US Virgin
Islands, and Vanuatu still resist the pressure to join in the
efforts to trace and seize suspects' assets and bank
accounts in the absence of a conviction or even charges.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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