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14 Laws 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/laws14 and id is 1 raw text is: laws MDPI Article Confiscation Beyond the All-Crime Approach and the Proportionality Principle-A Case of the Lithuanian Illicit Enrichment Offence Concept Skirmantas Bikelis Criminal Justice Research Department, Law Institute at Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, LT-01108 Vilnius, Lithuania; skirmantas.bikelis@teise.org Abstract: The article discusses the ultimate limits of crime proceeds control measures from the perspective of the proportionality principle. The concept of the general illicit enrichment offence (GIEO) is explored as it is considered one of the most radical illicit asset control measures. It is based on two extreme elements: first, it reaches broadly beyond the all-crime proceeds approach and targets any unexplained assets. Secondly, it provides highly intrusive measures, involving both the confiscation of assets and, in addition, criminal sanctions. The advantages and risks of the concept are examined from both practical and basic legal principle perspectives. The author presents recent results from the Lithuanian penal justice system, where the GIEO has been introduced into penal law and practice since the end of 2010. A rich body of case law from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and European Union Court of Justice (EUCJ) serves as the background of the analysis. The author concludes that the concept of GEIO is in conflict with the proportionality principle. Although the Lithuanian Constitutional Court did not find proportionality issues with the GIEO, the prospects of successful challenges with respect to the proportionality principle in the ECtHR and the EUCJ appear promising. Keywords: illicit enrichment; proportionality principle; crime proceeds; confiscation; corruption check for updates Received: 22 October 2024 Revised: 12 December 2024 Accepted: 20 December 2024 Published: 24 December 2024 Citation: Bikelis, Skirmantas. 2025. Confiscation Beyond the All-Crime Approach and the Proportionality Principle-A Case of the Lithuanian Illicit Enrichment Offence Concept. Laws 14: 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/ laws14010001 Copyright: © 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativeconmmons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction The pursuit of efficient strategies for enabling the confiscation of proceeds from predatory offences like organised crime, corruption, drug crimes, fraud, and tax evasion is a distinctive vector in contemporary penal policies (UN 2005; Commission of The European Communities 2008; European Commission 2020). 'Classic' confiscation measures target assets directly linked to established offences where the offender is successfully convicted. However, modern strategies aim to reach farther-to suspicious assets where neither is direct evidence of their connection to a predicate offence available nor has the predicate offence been resolved and successfully indicted. Modern confiscation strategies are split into two major concepts: criminal-offence- based and confiscation-focused approaches. The confiscation-focused trend drops the ambition to punish those in possession of illicit gains and instead focuses on the confiscation of ill-gotten assets. This shift alleviates justice authorities from the burden of presuming innocence, allows for a lower standard of proof, and even shifts the burden of proving the illicit (criminal) origin of the assets onto the defendant (ECtHR Phillips 2001; ECtHR Gogitidze 2015; ECtHR Telbis 2018). In the murky realm of suspicious assets, where direct evidence of their origin is unavailable, these alleviations significantly enhance the https:/ /doi.org/10.3390/lawsl40l100l Laws 2025, 14, 1

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