59 Views Once the law enforcement officers start a criminal investigation and the person is recognized as a "suspect" or "accused", the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency (CARA) is connected to the whole process. Thus, financial means, plots of land, real estate and even airplanes end up being seized and later estimated the value for the benefit of the state or returned to the person entitled by the court. What are the attributions of the CARA, what results the institution has recorded and what is happening now with the assets in the resonance files, we learn from the head of the agency, Serghei Carapunarlî.
The CARA is a subdivision of the National Anticorruption Center which is responsible for carrying out financial investigations regarding persons with the status of suspect or accused. The agency focuses on identifying and seizing criminal assets. These assets are located both in the Republic of Moldova and abroad.
The officers of the CARA work with international institutions to repatriate these assets: “When criminal assets are identified, they are seized. Afterwards, we take care to repatriate them when there is a final and irrevocable court decision of conviction and confiscation. In the same way, the CARA takes care of the records of identified goods", says the head of the CARA, Serghei Carapunarlî.
The head of the CARA also mentions a curious aspect. In the case of the estimating the value of a criminal asset located on the territory of a foreign state, the income is divided 50% to 50% with that state. There are, however, exceptions, when the country makes a political decision to return the full value of the financial means or confiscated property. It is also an example of the recovery of financial means registered in the name of the son of former prime minister Vlad Filat, Luca Filat.
Currently, the institution is working on an automated information system at the country level, implicitly with the national recovery program, so that a national recovery mechanism is created with all the records and possibility of generating statistics, and later elaborating some analyzes based on the accumulated data.
We mention that, in addition to everything, the CARA’s duties also include estimating of value of seized assets. “When we manage an asset or assets, we are concerned with the need to preserve their value. Either the person will be convicted and these assets will be directed to recovery, to ensure payment of the fine, or the person will be acquitted and the asset will be returned. So, it is important that the value of the asset is preserved", says the head of the CARA.
Criminal assets include cryptocurrencies. "In the Republic of Moldova, it is not regulated what cryptocurrency is - currency or asset. However, the CARA has results in this regard as well. We have also identified and seized virtual assets. Respectively, the agency wallet was also established where these assets were transferred and are now being administered", says Serghei Carapunarlî.
We mention that the agency was established in 2017 and from the moment it became functional until now it has succeeded in identifying and seizing assets in the country and abroad estimated at more than 6.2 billion lei. Of these, about 0.5 billion are assets from abroad.
"These assets are seized at the request of the prosecutor by issuing the order by the officers of the agency. By the national court, later, through the respective rogatory commission, this seizure goes to the jurisdiction where the asset was identified and we are dependent on the decision of the court in that country. Then we get the finality of the sequestration process when the court there confirms its application", explains Serghei Carapunarlî.
As for the finality of estimating the value of criminal assets, the head of the CARA mentions that up to now, over 33 million lei have been transferred to the state budget. These are finances or assets.
We specify that the CARA currently is dealing with 54 types of profit-generating crimes provided for in the Criminal Code. Given this workload, the agency's team has grown from 18 employees in 2019 to 35 officers today. The agency is ready to increase its team.