For the act of justice to be complete, the ill-gotten assets need to be recovered, Premier Dacian Ciolos said on Thursday.
"The driver of our progress this year with activating this agency (...) for the recovery of ill-gotten assets (...) is the idea that the act of justice is incomplete as long as we haven't recovered these assets. For the act of justice to be credible and complete, it's not just the handed down punishment that is important, but also the recovery of ill-gotten assets, because otherwise we risk to weaken the act of justice and the force of the judiciary's decision," Ciolos told the opening of the 6th Pan-European Conference of National Claims Recovery Offices in the EU, jointly organized in Bucharest by the European Commission, the Ministry of Justice and the National Agency for the Management of Frozen Assets.
According to the Premier, the idea to set up this agency "has been on paper for some time now", but it wasn't rendered operational.
"Justice Minister Mrs. Pruna pledged right from the beginning of this government's term in office to take action and find all the means for the agency to be operational when this government ends its term. I am glad to see that we got thus far, because we cannot tolerate dishonesty in pursuit of profit as a way of work and lifestyle in Romania. The decisions aimed only at punishing the respective individual without proving that the judiciary, the state in general, is capable to carry the act of justice through are not enough," said the PM.
Ciolos explained that according to reports of the Public Prosecution Office, more than half a billion euro worth of frozen money and assets are waiting to be redirected to the state budget.
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