Will confiscation return?

At the end of March 2004, the head of the Federation Council Committee on Legal and Judicial Affairs, Stanislav Vavilov, announced that a bill was being developed in the upper house of parliament on the confiscation of property from persons who violated the law.

According to the senator, he considers the withdrawal of the rule on confiscation of property "an unfortunate oversight that must be eliminated . "

This initiative is also supported by the Prosecutor General's Office. Thus, Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Sabir Kekhlerov believes that the confiscation of property is " "an effective tool for preventing crimes against property .

Meanwhile, many lawyers point out that such proposals are "a relic of the Middle Ages, giving the defendant's house to plunder" , and an ineffective relic: "Nowhere, in any developed country, is there such a thing that not only what he stole, all the property in general. Especially since the citizens who committed serious frauds never registered the property acquired by criminal means, and they had nothing to take. carpets, fur coats, chandeliers ," Alexander Barannikov, a former State Duma deputy from the Union of Right Forces, said in an interview with Novye Izvestia.

Sergey Vitsin, Deputy Chairman of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for the Improvement of Justice, recalls that the current legislation provides for the confiscation of property acquired by criminal means, instruments of crime, and means of production used in criminal activities. It also provides for compensation for damage caused by criminal activity, etc.

And according to lawyer Pavel Astakhov, the reason for the emergence of the new bill lies in the unwillingness and inability of the prosecutor's office to separate the acquired by criminal means from the acquired by law: "For this purpose, there are prosecutorial bodies in order to convert property acquired by criminal means into state revenue through the court ... But our prosecutors cannot defend the interests of the state in an open process, so they decided to restore the confiscation. So it's easier - not to understand, not to calculate and prove that it was specifically stolen, but to confiscate everything at once " .

Sources

• Kolesnichenko Alexander. confiscate everything // New news. 2004. March 29.