Unexplained wealth Act provisions proclaimed

Key pro­vi­sions of the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act, 2019 came in­to force on Ju­ly 28, bring­ing in­to op­er­a­tion the le­gal frame­work for civ­il as­set re­cov­ery, prop­er­ty re­stric­tion or­ders and un­ex­plained wealth pro­ceed­ings af­ter Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo is­sued a procla­ma­tion ac­ti­vat­ing sev­er­al sec­tions of the leg­is­la­tion.

The procla­ma­tion brings in­to force sec­tions 5, 6, 7, 18, 20 to 57, sec­tion 70(6), sec­tions 71 to 73, sec­tion 76 and Sched­ule 3 of the Act.

Among the pro­vi­sions now in op­er­a­tion is sec­tion 5, which states that “the stan­dard of proof re­quired to de­ter­mine any ques­tion un­der this Act as to whether re­cov­er­able prop­er­ty should be sub­ject to civ­il as­set re­cov­ery shall be on the bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties.”

Sec­tion 6 pro­vides that a Prop­er­ty Re­stric­tion Or­der and a Civ­il As­set For­fei­ture Or­der are or­ders in rem, mean­ing they are di­rect­ed against prop­er­ty be­lieved to be crim­i­nal prop­er­ty, ter­ror­ist prop­er­ty or in­stru­men­tal­i­ties of crime rather than against a per­son.

Sec­tion 7 states that “prop­er­ty which is crim­i­nal prop­er­ty, ter­ror­ist prop­er­ty or an in­stru­men­tal­i­ty of crime… is re­cov­er­able un­der this Act,” and al­lows such prop­er­ty to be re­cov­ered from the per­son who ob­tained it through crim­i­nal con­duct or, in the case of an in­stru­men­tal­i­ty, from the per­son who pos­sessed it for use in crim­i­nal con­duct.

The procla­ma­tion al­so ac­ti­vates Part III of the Act, which es­tab­lish­es the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment Fund to fi­nance the op­er­a­tions of the agency re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing seized as­sets, and re­quires an­nu­al re­ports and au­dit­ed ac­counts to be sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment.

In ad­di­tion, Part IV, com­pris­ing sec­tions 30 to 57, comes in­to force. It em­pow­ers the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment Agency to ap­ply to the High Court for Prop­er­ty Re­stric­tion Or­ders to freeze sus­pect­ed crim­i­nal as­sets pend­ing for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings. Sec­tion 33 pro­vides that, fol­low­ing a re­fer­ral from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, the agency may seek an or­der “to pro­hib­it a per­son from deal­ing with re­cov­er­able prop­er­ty un­til such time as an ap­pli­ca­tion can be made to for­feit the re­cov­er­able prop­er­ty.”

Un­der sec­tion 34, the High Court may grant a Prop­er­ty Re­stric­tion Or­der where it is sat­is­fied there are “rea­son­able grounds to be­lieve” the prop­er­ty is re­cov­er­able prop­er­ty or as­so­ci­at­ed prop­er­ty. The court may al­so di­rect the agency to seize, pre­serve and man­age the prop­er­ty while pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ue.