On September 16, the Anti-Corruption Research and Education Centre held the presentation of the study “Civil confiscation of unjustified assets through the prism of property rights”. The study was presented jointly with the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine.
The presentation of the survey results gathered together representatives of ACREC, High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine, Supreme Court and Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
Moderator Svitlana Zalischuk emphasised that this topic is very relevant in the context of European integration. It is also relevant because it is still unknown how the civil confiscation of unjustified assets is going to be implemented in practice and whether the Ukrainian model is going to be successful. All these and other questions were addressed to the participants of the discussion.
The introductory speech was made by the Deputy Chairman of High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine, Judge Yevhen Kruk. He drew attention to the urgency of the discussion due to the fact that cases of this category will be considered by High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine.
Tatiana Khutor, an ACREC expert, briefly presented her own research and its results. During the presentation, she spoke about the peculiarities of law enforcement during the implementation of the Ukrainian model of confiscation of unjustified assets and the problematic issues that could potentially arise in this process.
Representatives of the Supreme Court, Mykhailo Shumylo and Hennadiy Zelenov, stressed the importance of the exploration of the civil confiscation of unjustified assets but noted that the Supreme Court could not yet issue an opinion on this, as the judicial practise had not yet been established. However, after its development and with the help of this study, the problematic points will be analyzed much more deeply.
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, People’s Deputy of Ukraine and Deputy Chairman of the Committee noted that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine currently lacks such wide-ranging policy research that would take into account international aspects and recommendations for their application in Ukraine. He agreed with the point that the best test of the theoretical provisions of the law on the confiscation of unjustified assets is their application in practice.
Summing up the meeting, the participants agreed on the need to deepen the further discussion on various aspects of the use of the instrument of confiscation of unjustified assets and cooperation to improve legal provisions within this topic.
The presentation of the research results took place with the financial support of the Think Tank Development Initiative for Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation and Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with the financial support of the Swedish Embassy in Ukraine.