Now the police will be allowed to take criminals' stuff – without criminal suspicion

Published 5 November 2024 at 09.47

Domestic. On Friday, a new provision will come into force which will enable the taking of assets of criminal origin from criminals – “independent forfeiture”. The property does not need to be linked to any concrete crime or proceeds of crime in order to be seized and confiscated.

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– The police together with the prosecutor are ready to start working with the new legislation and various cases. The legislation gives us powerful new tools to seize the assets of criminals. If we strangle the assets, it will be more difficult to invest in new criminal schemes or launder the proceeds of crime, says Torbjörn Rosén, national coordinator against criminal finance at Noa.

With the new legislation, the police can seize assets and the prosecutor can request confiscation even if the property cannot be linked to a specific crime. Police and prosecutors only need to show that the property comes from criminal activity, that is, that the property is disproportionate to a person's legal capabilities, such as owning a property, cars or money in a bank account.

For to find assets, the police can carry out body searches or house searches.

– We believe that the law may make it easier for us to access people higher up in the criminal networks who make a lot of money from, for example, fraud and drug trafficking. It is often difficult to connect these people's assets directly to concrete crimes, even if we believe we have convincing evidence that the property comes from criminal activity, says Torbjörn Rosén on the police's website.

The text of the law says that if is clearly more likely that property derives from criminal activity than that this is not the case, the property must be confiscated, i.e. ownership of the property passes to the state.

– The courts must show us where the line is and create practice for independent confiscation, the police and prosecutors are in the starting pits with many cases, says Torbjörn Rosén.

The police can start an investigation into independent confiscation and carry out a seizure, after which the case is taken over by the prosecutor, who leads the investigation. The prosecutor requests that the seized property be forfeited to the district court. Confiscation means that the state takes over the ownership of the property.

The person who is the owner of the property has the right to legal assistance, i.e. a legal representative who can safeguard the owner's rights in the trial.

A confiscation decisions can be appealed.