The Criminal Assets Recovery Agency will have extended powers and will be further managed by the National Anticorruption Center. This is provided in a legislative initiative to amend and supplement a number of legal acts that was passed by Parliament in the first reading, IPN reports.
One of the authors of the proposal, Democratic MP Sergiu Sarbu said that besides the current powers stipulated by the legislation, the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency will also have the right to represent the state and legal entities of public law in civil lawsuits concerning criminal assets recovery and to repair the damage caused by violations of the legislation of the Republic of Moldova and other states.
The bill authors also proposed a number of changes to the Penal Procedure Code. Thus, the special confiscation and extended confiscation of crime assets and the repair of the damage done by offenses are applied by court decision or, in particular cases, by order of the prosecutor. The recovered assets are returned to the lawful owner, but can also be transferred to the state if damage is caused to the state by the offense.
The Agency will also keep a common record of the information about the recovered crime assets that it administers and of the possessions subject to special confiscation or extended confiscation, including by creating a specialized national database about the activity of the competent public entities at each stage of the recovery process, etc.
Earlier, it was proposed that the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency should be transferred under the management of the State Tax Service, but this idea was given up as a result of a thorough analysis.
