NEWS: Herald-Sun 05 Sep 02: Laws to ensure crime won't pay

Laws to ensure crime won't pay
By KEITH MOOR
05sep02
STREET level drug dealers, car thieves, burglars, abalone poachers, standover merchants and blackmailers face losing all their assets under new seizure laws.
Criminals' assets will be frozen upon or before arrest and automatically forfeited after conviction.
And police will be able to sell possessions likely to depreciate in value, such as luxury cars and boats, even before their owners appear in court.
[Edit: Who the hell starts a sentence with 'And..'? Where do they get these writers? BT ]
After conviction it will be up to the criminals to prove they legally obtained the seized assets, rather than for police to prove they were the proceeds of crime.
They will lose everything they own, from houses right down to watches and clothes, unless they can prove lawful acquisition.
Police Minister Andre Haermeyer yesterday defended the reversal of the usual onus of proof as necessary to hit criminals where it hurt most – in their hip pockets.
Greatly increasing the range of crimes subject to automatic forfeiture is just one of the sweeping changes to Victoria's Confiscation Act to be announced by the Government today.
Police also will be given the power to search and freeze gaming accounts, such as those operated by the TAB and Crown casino.
Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said police had long been hindered by a lack of access to such gaming accounts.
"There is a reasonable history to underpin that these are accounts that people use to wash money," she said.
Ms Nixon welcomed the reform package.
"We'll have greater powers and streamlined processes to strike at the heart of major criminals," she said.
"The changes will give great confidence to the community that crime does not pay."
Mr Haermeyer said the amendments would make Victoria's criminal asset seizure laws the toughest in Australia...
Full article at: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5035336%255E661,00.html
BigTrancer
[Edit: Fixed typo in title.]
[ 06 September 2002: Message edited by: BigTrancer ]

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And police will be able to sell possessions likely to depreciate in value, such as luxury cars and boats, even before their owners appear in court.
Frozen assets I can deal with before court, but being sold BEFORE going to court is fucking ridiculus..... So much for innocent until proven guilty here in Australia..

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... Another consequence of my arrest is that most of my possessions were seized on the premise that they were either paid for with drug manufacturing profits or they were actually used to make drugs. I could merely rattle off a list of interesting (and pricey) items that would break a materialist's heart, but the point here isn't to impress you with what I owned, rather, to illustrate that there isn't a lot of logic involved in the seizure process. Furthermore, when they do seize something you have to take them to court (in a separate civil action) to get the stuff back. This will cost you beaucoup bucks and you'll probably lose anyway (this is what my lawyer said, and he specializes in Federal criminal & civil cases). Fortunately, you can sometimes *ask* for certain things back, and if you were cooperative, they will honor the requests. Other times they will just outright give you things back. For instance, they seized about $10,000 in electronic test equipment that had absolutely nothing to do with making drugs and, besides a $3,000 digital storage oscilloscope, wasn't even paid for with drug profits. However, a 1991 Ducati 900SS motorcycle, an obvious *toy* that was paid for with drug profits, was given back to me for unknown reasons (they initially seized it but later said to my lawyer, and I quote, "we want to give it back to him"). My 1988 Mazda RX-7 they ignored, saying that it was "a piece of junk" - this was where I typically kept the "Lonely Laptop on the Fringe" as well as a few other neat toys. Had I known that they weren't interested in "junky" cars (mine had some rust as well as 100k+ miles) then I would have stashed my money in it, instead of a fire safe that they naturally cracked open immediately.
So Russ, maybe your car will be OK afterall

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What happens if your are wrongly convicted or set up? Do you get re-imbursed? I highly doubt it.
If you are wrongly convicted, or set-up, you're still convicted (found guilty - regardless of the "merit" of the conviction). You ask most criminals, i'm sure a decent percentage would tell you that they were wrongly convicted or set-up. If you could prove that however, then it's a different story, and yes people do bring actions against the government for compensation for wrongful imprisonment. You culd sue and get your assets back, plus a nice story with ACA. Although it's not like people being pardoned after being set-up or wrongly convicted is an everyday occurance, it'd be only one in a couple of thousand that are.

I better put my old falcon in my Dad's name, just in case anything bad happens!!!
Been poaching abalone hey?
If you are playing illegal games, or indulging in illegal activity, surely you must expect the assets bought with the proceeds of illegal monies to be seized and sold? That's a risk you take when you start buying yachts and luxury cars bought with money that you can't account for.
That's why if you were big enough to be worth noticing by the police, you'd have a business to launder the money through and accountants working overtime to falsify books.
A couple of years ago up here there was a vietnamese family convicted of selling large amounts of heroin. They lived in a housing commission house, and all received benefits. However, they also owned half a street of prime real-estate on the bay and several luxury cars, etc. None of it could be taken away because the police couldn't show it was bought with ill-gotten gains. The reversal of the onus of proof is a maybe not nice change, but it's a bit more fair (in terms of the victims of crime, or drug addicts that paid for all the assets).
my 2c anyways.

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