During August 2018, EUACI conducted a legislative assessment of new amendments to the Special Law on the National Agency of Ukraine for finding, tracing, and management of assets derived from corruption and other crimes (ARMA).
Such an assessment is needed for bringing the Special Law incompliancewith international standards. Also, the document should include all the experience gained during the year of ARMA’s work and fulfil the gaps that prevent the Agencyto workeffectively.
Amendments to the Special Law are related to the following issues:
- expansion of ARMA’s access to information sources and data processing with modern IT-tools; automatization of these processes and minimization of human participation at the stage of primary data collection and processing;
- creating opportunities for ARMA to participate in criminal proceedings in a narrow range of issues, related to the management of the seized property;
- provision of ARMA with effective instruments of representation of Ukraine in cases of asset recovery in foreign courts; the introduction of opportunities to attract specialized foreign detective companies for assets tracing, as well as institutions that finance litigation for assets recovery in favor of their states of origin;
- expansion of the possibilities of filling the State Budget of Ukraine at the expense of added value arising from the management of assets by ARMA;
- elimination of the disadvantages in the legal regulation of the management of the seized property; bringing other legislative acts in line with the provisions of the Special Law.
The Draft Law was distributed among the other interested government agencies for consideration, after which it will be sent to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
The Draft law will strengthen the capacity of ARMA to trace and manage assets not only in Ukraine, but also abroad.