EC Report On Romania: Confiscation Of Criminal Assets Hampered By Restrictive Court Practices

The Commission notes that, since its last evaluation, Romania has prepared an independent impact study on its anticorruption policy.

"The recommendation contained therein put emphasis on giving high political priority to the fight against corruption, developing a comprehensive new anti-corruption strategy with long-term objectives and involving stakeholders from the three branches of power and civil society," says the report.

According to the document, "the effectiveness of the fight against corruption is hindered by serious weaknesses in recovering the proceeds of crime."

The Commission says that, according to statistics supplied by the Romanian authorities, "in 2010 final confiscation orders were ruled against criminal assets deriving from all types of criminality totaling EUR1.8 million, of which EUR0.2 million was actually recovered." Given the extent of high-level corruption in Romania, these amounts are very small, says the Commission.

The report notes that "efforts are being made by the General Prosecutor to address [the lack of proactive behavior], but they are hindered by resourcing and in particular by the legal framework."

"In practice, criminal assets can only be confiscated if they are the direct proceeds of crime for which a conviction had been achieved or when they are linked to damage caused by a proven criminal offence. Problems are also encountered in confiscating assets passed on to third parties. In this way a substantial amount of criminal assets escapes legal scrutiny which has been illustrated recently in the case of large-scale corruption investigations among border police and customs where only a relatively small sum of assets are expected to be confiscated although it can be assumed that these criminal activities have been carried out in a systematic way over a long period."

The document says that, since the EC's last assessment, "Romania took steps to provide for more effective verifications of public tenders against irregularities following risk assessments."

"Since the Commission's last assessment, Romania re-established the legal base for the Department for the Fight against Fraud (DLAF), the counterpart of OLAF to carry out investigative actions. These improvements are welcome, but at the same time, administrative capacity and the quality of administrative action remain weak, and are the main challenges in the field of public procurement," says the report.

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