PARIS—The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has released amended recommendations to give law enforcement, financial intelligence units, prosecutors, other asset-recovery practitioners extra powers to target and confiscate criminal assets.
“The amendments are the result of a top-level FATF meeting in 2022, during which ministers agreed that efforts to confiscate the proceeds of crime were not keeping up with the volume of criminal assets flowing through the global financial system,” according to Step.org. “FATF therefore made it a strategic priority to improve asset-recovery outcomes. This culminated in the first substantive change to the FATF recommendations related to asset freezing, seizure, confiscation, forfeiture and associated international cooperation since the standards were first developed in 1990.”
What’s Required
The new regime requires countries to establish asset recovery as a priority, both at domestic and international level, and to periodically review their confiscation policies and operational frameworks. Countries must also coordinate and share information internally to identify criminal property, Step.org noted.
Most significantly, Step.org said the FATF now expects countries to establish a non-conviction-based confiscation regime in their legal systems, where it can be consistent with fundamental principles of domestic law.
“It says these regimes have proven effective when criminal prosecution is unlikely or impossible and particularly when combatting the laundering of money linked to corruption,” the report states. “It also takes into account legal differences between countries and the protection of property rights of innocent parties.”
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