The Fight Against Corruption and Money Laundering: The Office of the Asset Recovery and Management

Abstract

The art.367 septies, was added to the Criminal Procedure Law (LECrim in Spanish) through Final Disposition 1º number three of the Organic Law 5/2010, of 22 June, which modified the Organic Law 10/1995, of 23 November of the Criminal Code. Thus, for the first time, the creation of an Office dedicated to Asset Recovery (OAR).

Although considered necessary, this legislative amendment was never implemented in practice and its functions were assumed in part by the Center for Intelligence against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITOC) and the National Plan on Drugs (Act 17/2003 of 29 May). Furthermore, since it was designed solely to carry out asset tracing tasks and not to manage them, the judicial bodies lacked the necessary assistance to be able to administer and perform the effects seized and confiscated. As a result, they were faced with the task of managing assets that had previously been seized and confiscated for which they lacked the necessary material and human resources.

However, the need to comply with Directive 2014/42/EU of the Parliament and Council of 3 April 2014 on the freezing and confiscation of instrumentalities and the proceeds of crime in the European Union and, as a result, to improve the effectiveness of the system of asset recovery and management, led to the amendment of Organic Law 1/2015 of 30 March, which amended Organic Law 10/1995, by means of the fifth Additional Provision of the LECrim (introduced by Law 41/2015, of 5 October, amending the Criminal Procedure Act to speed up criminal justice and strengthen procedural guarantees) the content of art.367 septies of the LECrim, in the sense of completing its initial function of locating and recovering assets with that of administering and managing them, made clear by renaming the initial OAR (Office of Asset Recovery) into the current OARM: Office of Asset Recovery and Management.