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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:10 am
Time: 2:10 am
Results for economic sanctions
3 results foundAuthor: U.S. Department of the Treasury. Office of Foreign Asets Control Title: Impact Report on Economic Sanctions Against Colombia Drug Cartels Summary: Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") integrates regulatory, national security, investigative, enforcement, and intelligence elements towards a single goal: effective implementation of economic sanctions programs against foreign threats and adversaries. OFAC currently administers and enforces more than 30 economic sanctions programs pursuant to Presidential and Congressional mandates, targeting select foreign countries and regimes, terrorist organizations, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, and narcotics traffickers. OFAC acts under general Presidential wartime and national emergency powers, as well as specific legislation, to prohibit transactions and freeze (or "block") assets within the United States or in possession or control of U.S. persons, including their foreign branches. These programs are administered in conjunction with diplomatic, law enforcement and occasionally military action. Since 1995, the Executive Branch has developed an array of "targeted" sanctions programs that focus on drug cartels and traffickers, international terrorist groups, proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, members of hostile regimes, and other individuals and groups whose activities threaten U.S. interests. Narcotics traffickers operating on a global scale require an extensive support network, including procurement, logistics, transportation, communications, security, money laundering, and other facilitation. Disguising the sometimes vast profits derived from major drug operations requires the purchase of ostensibly legitimate enterprises capable of handling business on an international scale. These illicitly funded "corporate empires" can be extensive, complex, and undermine the integrity of financial systems. They are also one of the drug cartels' greatest vulnerabilities. To combat the threats of violence, corruption, and harm posed by narcotics traffickers and their networks, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12978 in October 1995, declaring a national emergency with respect to significant foreign narcotics traffickers centered in Colombia. The impact of these sanctions has been significant and, at times, dramatic. When OFAC designates an individual or entity, any assets within the United States or the possession or control of a U.S. person anywhere in the world, must be frozen. Trade with or through the United States is cut off. Moreover, many non-U.S. businesses and banks have voluntarily severed all ties with individuals and entities that OFAC has listed. As a result, designated persons may lose access to their bank accounts outside the United States, disrupting their operations and freedom of access. Finally, in many cases, Colombian authorities have taken law enforcement actions against designated companies or properties after OFAC listed them. Collectively, these actions have disrupted more than $1 billion worth of assets - in blockings, seizures, forfeitures, and the failure of enterprises - and economically isolated the individuals who own and manage the enterprises. The Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy ("ONDCP"), in fact, stated that OFAC's efforts have resulted in "the forfeiture of billions of dollars worth of drug-related assets." This report reviews the SDNT program's achievements over the past 11 years, as it has targeted the leaders of Colombia's Cali, North Valle, and North Coast drug cartels. It is our hope that the report will provide a useful window into the history and achievements of this program, as well as lessons for refining sanctions targeting and implementation in the future in this and other programs. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2007. 180p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 13, 2015 at: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/narco_impact_report_05042007.pdf Year: 2007 Country: Colombia URL: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/narco_impact_report_05042007.pdf Shelf Number: 136005 Keywords: Asset ForfeitureDrug CartelsDrug TraffickingDrug-Related ViolenceEconomic Sanctions |
Author: Matrix Insight Title: Assessing the effectiveness of EU Member States' practices in the identification, tracing, freezing and confiscation of criminal assets Summary: The EU Action Plan to combat organised crime of April 19971 States that: "The European Council stresses the importance for each Member State of having well developed and wide ranging legislation in the field of confiscation of the proceeds of crime..." Furthermore, the EU Millennium Strategy States that "The European Council is determined to ensure that concrete steps are taken to trace, freeze, seize and confiscate the proceeds of crime". In line with these undertakings, and having regard to the urgency of controlling criminal assets in the face of terrorist threat, the Action Plan for the Hague Programme is currently reviewing EU legislation in this area and, if necessary, will strengthen it. The target date for completing this process is 20083. Obtaining an accurate, reliable and comprehensive overview of the practice of, and provisions for, criminal asset identification, tracing, freezing and confiscation across EU Member States is a critical phase in this process. The European Commission DG JLS therefore commissioned Matrix Knowledge Group (referred to in the text as "Matrix") to provide an overview of the enforcement of confiscation provisions in all EU Member States. For this purpose, Matrix has undertaken a literature review, interviews, case studies and a statistical and qualitative quota sample survey in order to: - map current practice around the investigative, judicial and disposal phases of the asset recovery process, noting use of specific tools and techniques in investigation (with relative frequency of use) and levels of cooperation with banks, financial and nonfinancial institutions; - identify effective practice by country (with a view to knowledge transfer); - identify obstacles to effective implementation of existing legal provisions by country; distinguishing where possible between jurisprudential and other causes of impediment and, where jurisprudential causes are identified, whether modification of the relevant EU instrument would be appropriate; - examine the potential for cooperation and information exchange between EU Member State asset recovery agencies and between those agencies and similar agencies in third party jurisdictions; - set up and, as far as practicable, populate a statistical model of Member States' asset recovery activities; - propose a performance index for asset recovery operations of Member States (such an index may contain input, output and outcome elements); - produce a set of overarching summary conclusions about the effectiveness of asset recovery procedures at an operational level, diagnosis of shortcomings classified by type of cause and recommendations about potential points of treatment intervention and the nature of plausible treatments; - estimate the likely benefits accruing from implementing recommended treatments and identifying the main points of institutional and agency impact; - provide an impact map identifying which Member States are likely to experience the greatest degree of positive change if recommendations are implemented. Details: Brussels: European Commission, Directorate-General Justice, Freedom & Security, 2009. 189p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 13, 2015 at: http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/intro/docs/20120312/final_asset_recovery_report_june_2009.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Europe URL: http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/intro/docs/20120312/final_asset_recovery_report_june_2009.pdf Shelf Number: 136006 Keywords: Asset ForfeitureEconomic SanctionsOrganized CrimeProceeds of Crime |
Author: Colgan, Beth Title: Wealth-Based Penal Disenfranchisement Summary: This Article offers the first comprehensive examination of the way in which the inability to pay economic sanctions-fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution—may prevent people of limited means from voting. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of penal disenfranchisement upon conviction, and all but two states revoke the right to vote for at least some offenses. The remaining jurisdictions allow for re-enfranchisement for most or all offenses under certain conditions. One often overlooked condition is payment of economic sanctions regardless of whether the would-be voter has the ability to pay before an election registration deadline. The scope of wealth-based penal disenfranchisement is grossly underestimated, with commentators typically stating that nine states sanction such practices. Through an in-depth examination of a tangle of statutes, administrative rules, and policies related to elections, clemency, parole, and probation, as well as responses from public disclosure requests and discussions with elections and corrections officials and other relevant actors, this Article reveals that wealth-based penal disenfranchisement is authorized in forty-eight states and the District of Columbia. After describing the mechanisms for wealth-based penal disenfranchisement, this Article offers a doctrinal intervention for dismantling them. There has been limited, and to date unsuccessful, litigation challenging these practices as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection and due process clauses. Because voting eligibility is stripped of its fundamental nature for those convicted of a crime, wealth-based penal disenfranchisement has been subject to the lowest level of scrutiny, rational basis review, leading lower courts to uphold the practice. This Article posits that these courts have approached the validity of wealth-based penal disenfranchisement through the wrong frame - the right to vote - when the proper frame is through the lens of punishment. This Article examines a line of cases in which the Court restricted governmental action that would result in disparate treatment between rich and poor in criminal justice practices, juxtaposing the cases against the Court's treatment of wealth-based discrimination in the Fourteenth Amendment doctrine and the constitutional relevance of indigency in the criminal justice system broadly. Doing so supports the conclusion that the Court has departed from the traditional tiers of scrutiny. The resulting test operates as a flat prohibition against the use of the government's prosecutorial power in ways that effectively punish one's financial circumstances unless no other alternative response could satisfy the government's interest in punishing the disenfranchising offense. Because such alternatives are available, wealth-based penal disenfranchisement would violate the Fourteenth Amendment under this approach. Details: Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - School of Law, 2019. 75p. Source: Internet Resource: UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 19-10: 72 Vand. L. Rev. 55 (2019): Accessed July 2, 2019 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3312439 Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3312439 Shelf Number: 156823 Keywords: DisenfranchisementDue ProcessEconomic SanctionsEqual ProtectionFines and FeesFourteenth AmendmentPovertySentencingVoting Rights |