The brazilian framework on asset recovery : its strengths and weaknesses

Abstract

Combating organized crime is not a task for amateurs. The agents of the State, no-matter how well-meaning they are, need both agile and effective instruments that provide for the respecting of human rights, so as to act in combating an activity that already claims thousands of lives daily. Increasingly, there is a concern in the sense that the solution for this type of crime should not be left in the hands of a single hero: it is fundamentally essential to the existence of institutions to be sufficiently empowered with instruments having the capacity to cope with these well equipped criminal organizations. One of the most effective strategies — and offering less risk of loss to human life – is exactly the blocking (or freezing) and the recovering of assets obtained by the constituents of these organizations. That is because, the State's chances of eliminating these criminal cells greatly increases if the financial capacity of these organizations is effectively extinguished. It is obvious that, at the same time, this equivalent like strategy still lends itself to the idea that the State can recover the billions of dollars or euros that were improperly removed from the economy of the country