Ensuring that criminals do not profit of illicit activities is a key issue for preventing criminality. It is fundamental for every country to break off the functioning of criminal groups and to discourage them by confiscating the gains of crime.

The application of the new Asset Seizure Module in courts and prosecutors’ offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina started on 1 January 2020. The aim of the module is to facilitate the procedures of data delivery and review of cases in which, following the proposal of the competent prosecutor offices, the court delivers the decision to seize the assets.

Data on the enforcement of court judgments, particular on those that impose asset seizure, are crucial for meaningful judicial data collection and their processing.

The establishment of Asset Seizure Module is a very important aspect of the overall efforts to position asset confiscation at the very top of the priorities within the work of the judiciary and of all relevant prosecutor offices in BiH. Applying the module at the level of each prosecutor's office and court, judicial office holders will have at any time access to exact data on how many financial investigations and temporary or permanent asset seizures are processed.

The new module can serve as a best practice example for other countries in the region which need to build similar mechanisms,″ said professor Eldan Mujanović who supported the work on the module.

Asset seizure has been introduced in all criminal codes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in the: Law on Confiscation of Proceeds of Crime in FBiH, Law on Confiscation of Proceeds of Crime in RS and Law on Confiscation of Proceeds of Crime in Brčko District of BiH. Rigours punishments do not only penalise crimes but have also a chilling effect. Asset seizure is complementary measure in this regard and ensures that nobody benefits from committing a criminal act.

The module was developed with the financial assistance of the European Union and the Federal Agency for the Management of Seized Property provided expert input.

To ease the application of the new module and enable better understanding of the entire asset seizure process the HJPC BiH has prepared and distributed a user manual to all courts and prosecutors’ offices in BiH.

Exchange of best practices is important to ensure effective management seized and confiscated assets, thus the European Union will fund also the organisation of regional trainings to take place in the first half of 2020 in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Tuzla and Mostar.

For more information, please contact: Dalila Hadžić, IPA Communication and Visibility Officer under 033 704 601.