Changes at the anti-mafia law

After two years of discussion with the international and domestic justice actors, the Ministry of Justice handed to Parliament the final draft of the Anti-Mafia law amends.

The novelty of this proposition is passing the competences of corruption to the Court and Prosecution of Serious Crimes.

The draft-law passes 21 crimes of the Anti-Mafia package of 2009, known as the law “for preventing and hitting organized crime and traffic through preventive measures against assets and wealth”.

Exactly for this reason they have proposed to include in the Anti-Mafia package the acts: asking and giving recompense for adoption procedures; active and passive corruption in the private sector; active corruption of people who lead public functions; active corruption of foreign public employees; exerting illegal influence; violating equality in tenders; passive corruption of persons who exert public functions.

Interesting is the fact that the draft-law requests the inclusion of the following crimes at the Anti-Mafia package: active and passive corruption of judges, prosecutors, domestic or foreign arbitraries, high state officials and of foreign judge members.

The inclusion of these acts aims not only to prevent corruptive acts by seizing and confiscating unjustified assets of the people under investigation, but also against the assets of relatives to the officials that are suspected, such as wives, children, grandparents, grandchildren, and even father in laws, mother in laws, stepdaughters, stepsons, stepmothers and stepfathers.

The Ministry of Justice says in the accompanying relation that based on statistics, there have been a high number of reported crimes from 2011-2012, and a low number of convicts.

The Ministry of Justice thinks that the passing of these acts under the competency of the Serious Crimes doesn’t damage the work of the task-force units for following the economic crime cases, which have 48 other crimes under their competency.

The relation foresees the for Parliament Members, Constitutional Court Judges, Supreme Court Judges and Judges, the Prosecutor has the obligation to file at the respective organ an authorization request to pursue with the arrest, detention of any kind or searches, a request that needs to be argued with facts and evidence based on the law.

But by changing article 288 for defining the lawfulness in every phase of the process against people with immunity, the Ministry thinks that article 289 of the Criminal Code, in which are extended the guarantees of personal immunity not only for arrests and detentions, but also for other measures, such as the identification or communication surveillance.