The confiscation rule returns

As reported on October 25, 2005 by the Vremya Novostei newspaper, the Russian government intends to return the rule on confiscation of property to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: the bill has already been prepared by the cabinet of ministers and will soon be submitted by the president to the State Duma.

Statements about the need to return the confiscation of property caused a flurry of criticism from human rights activists and the legal community. The main theses of the opponents boiled down to the fact that the current legislation of the Russian Federation provides for the confiscation of property and that the proposed rule cancels the presumption of innocence.

The position of the General Prosecutor's Office on this issue is that the principle of the presumption of innocence is not affected, since we are talking about the confiscation of property, in respect of which the court decided that it was acquired by criminal means, and the statements that the confiscation of property is provided for in the current criminal legislation of the Russian Federation, representatives prosecutors consider "unscrupulous slyness ", since we are talking about "confiscation of all property acquired by criminal means, and not part of it, which is provided for by current legislation" .

Meanwhile, according to Doctor of Law, professor at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences Inga Mikhailovskaya, "confiscation as a punishment does not imply clarification of a causal relationship between committed criminal acts and property . " "The norms prescribed in the current Code of Criminal Procedure are more than enough ," I. Mikhailovskaya believes.

According to the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, lawyer Andrey Makarov, in Russia "there is a revision and revision of those democratic reforms in the legislation that were won back from the totalitarian state . "

"There is a bureaucratic revenge. And the confiscation is far from the first and, unfortunately, not the last victim of this revenge. But the worst thing is that the judicial system stood guard over the interests of the bureaucracy. We can safely say that the judicial reform in the country has failed. "

Sources

• Return of confiscation of property to the Criminal Code - revenge of totalitarianism? // Polit.Ru. 2005. October 26.