Portugal’s justice minister, Rita Alarcão Júdice, is working hard on completing the legislative process that aims to deepen the mechanism for confiscating assets in cases of corruption, and other serious crimes.
She told parliament yesterday that she would like to see the issue “definitely resolved by the end of the year”.
The draft bill that will then follow provides for the confiscation of assets even after the crimes have expired and/ or the ‘suspects’ have died. It is part of the government’s ‘anti-corruption agenda’, approved over a year ago.
Once rubber-stamped by the Council of Ministers, the bill will be sent to parliament for discussion and (hopefully) approval.
There have been varying ideas behind this initiative, even the much more drastic suggestion by CHEGA that assets should be confiscated even before ‘suspects’ reach a courtroom (which can take years, as has been seen in the Marquês case, involving former prime minister José Sócrates, only now in court after almost a decade of judicial nitpicking).
Source: LUSA
