The legal development of measures to seize the assets of criminal activity has been underway since the second half of the 20th century. The variety of measures that have developed - punishment (criminal liability) combined with confiscation, extended confiscation, civil confiscation, non-conviction-based confiscation, declaration of assets ownerless resulting in their forfeiture, and so on, has also shaped two policy strands, one classical and the other hybrid. The latter requires creative solutions to legal measures to deal with the proceeds from crime. However, with the development of various tools and methods to seize illicit assets, it is worth looking back and raising the legal question of proportionality.
For this purpose, Dr Skirmantas Bikelis, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, publishd his new article. In the Laws journal of MDPI publication “Confiscation Beyond the All-Crime Approach and the Proportionality Principle - A Case of the Lithuanian Illicit Enrichment Offence Concept”, the researcher examines the proportionality of one of the Lithuanian measures. “Is the criminal liability for the crime of unlawful enrichment (LR CC 1891) and the accompanying confiscation in a certain context - not an excessive state reaction that violates the principle of proportionality?” – asks the researcher.
In search of answers to this question, S. Bikelis examines the case law of national criminal courts and specific cases, the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the issue, and the conclusions of international judicial institutions.
The full analysis can be found in an open access publication: Bikelis, S. (2025). Confiscation Beyond the All-Crime Approach and the Proportionality Principle—A Case of the Lithuanian Illicit Enrichment Offence Concept. Laws, 14(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws14010001.
The project Money Laundering in the system of the Criminal Gains Control Strategies (LEKOSTRA) is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), Contract No. S-MIP-23-40.