IRELAND: EU officials will discuss co-operating with the private sector to deal with organised crime, and whether to use the civil courts to confiscate criminal assets, following yesterday's informal meeting of justice ministers in Dublin.
The meeting heard a report on a conference on organised crime held in Dublin last November, which examined public-private co-operation in dealing with the problem. The kinds of crime under discussion at that conference included counterfeiting goods, intellectual property theft and smuggling of goods and people.
"There appeared to be agreement on the merit of a partnership approach to organised crime," said Mr McDowell, the Minister for Justice and chairman of the informal meeting. "There will now be more detailed discussions of it among officials. However, there was a view that we use existing EU institutions to fight organised crime, rather than create new ones."
The officials will be looking at the recommendations of the November conference, attended by representatives of law-enforcement agencies from both EU member- and accession states, along with relevant private bodies.
They recommended the establishment of a protocol on partnerships between the public and private sectors at national level, and an action plan at EU level, along with an effective exchange of data across the EU.
Yesterday's meeting also heard a report on how the Government set up the Criminal Assets Bureau, and the thinking underlying it. The CAB targets property, rather than individuals, and the law allows assets that are the proceeds of crime to be forfeited to the State.
Because this is a civil procedure, and the personal liberty of a citizen is not at stake, the burden of proof is the balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt, as it would be in criminal proceedings.
Property can be seized regardless of whether the individual who owns it has been convicted of an offence, and follows a finding that the property is the proceeds of crime, and therefore not the lawful property of the person in the first place.
However, Mr McDowell said that, while a few states were positive about this approach, and a number were very interested, he did not see it being adopted in the near future.
He pointed out that already there is provision for the confiscation of criminal assets across the EU following a criminal conviction. "I don't see the CAB getting the right to seize a villa in Spain," he said. "But the Spanish police could if under their own law it was found to be the proceeds of crime."