A consultative working session on the Draft Asset Recovery Bill was held this morning at the Conference Room of the Attorney General’s Office in Port Louis.
The Draft Asset Recovery bill makes provision for criminal asset recovery based on conviction as well as for civil asset recovery where there has been no criminal trial or no conviction. The Office of the Attorney General, with the technical assistance of consultants from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and of Sir Victor Glover, Legal Consultant, has been working on the bill for two years now.
The consultative session was chaired by the Attorney General, Mr Y. Varma, with interventions from the head of the consultant team from the IMF, Mr G. Esposito. It brought together representatives of the legal and financial professions and officials from the State Law Office, the Prime Minister’s Office, ICAC and the Financial Intelligence Unit as well as the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP). The session aimed at introducing the concept of Asset Recovery to stakeholders and getting the views of participants in the preparation of the bill.
In his opening remarks, the Attorney General said that the Asset Recovery Bill is in line with Government programme for an independent law department agency to reinforce the fight against transnational crime and recover ill-gotten gains. He added that the bill would prescribe procedures to enable recovery of proceeds from terrorist funding and organised crime. The proposed piece of legislation provides an important instrument in the fight against fraud, corruption and crime in general, he said.
The representative from IMF, Mr G. Esposito, recalled that combating money laundering and corruption was important to IMF since financial integrity is the basis of the financial stability of a country. In this perspective, the organisation provides substantial technical assistance to member countries on strengthening their legal, regulatory, institutional and financial supervisory frameworks for anti-money laundering initiatives and combating the financing of terrorism.
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