Newly approved asset recovery law requires defendants to prove the legal provenance of suspicious assets – O País

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Newly approved asset recovery law requires defendants to prove the legal provenance of suspicious assets – O País

4:09 CAT | 05 Nov 2020

Photo: O País

With all three parliamentary benches voting in favour, Mozambique yesterday approved, in general, the new Special Legal Regime for Extended Loss of Assets and Recovery of Assets in favour of the State.

This legal instrument endows the judicial system with the power to seize and revert to the State all assets proven to result from illegal activities such as corruption, trafficking in drugs, people or weapons, terrorism, tax evasion and tax fraud, loan sharking and money laundering.

According to Minister of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs, Helena Kida, corruption alone costs the state more than 2.6 billion meticais between 2016 and 2019.

One of the novelties of the new legal regime is that the “burden of proof” is reversed.

“The law obliges the perpetrator to demonstrate the lawful provenance of the presumed proceeding of the crime,” the minister explained. That is, the court has the prerogative to seize any property or asset that it deems to be the result of illegal activity, unless the owner can show that it was acquired legally.

The new regime, which is now progressing to consideration of specifics, provides for the creation of two new strategic offices, which will have an active role in prosecution.

These are an Asset Recovery Office and an Asset Administration And Management Office, acting under the supervision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Economy and Finance respectively.

The two offices will have the mission of “identifying and tracking incongruous assets, carrying out the appropriate financial or patrimonial investigation”, the approved proposal indicates.

By William Mapote

A reverse onus clause is a provision within a statute that shifts the burden of proof onto the individual specified to disprove an element of the information. Typically, this particular provision concerns a shift in burden onto a defendant in either a criminal offence or tort claim.

Source: O País