Book Review: The Limits of Asset Confiscation: On the Legitimacy of Extended Appropriation of Criminal Proceeds
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Anton Moiseienko |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2032284417738360 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
more comprehensive evaluation of the legal nature of EU preventive sanctions. This is of particular
interest as the recent re-emergence of the preventive paradigm in the EU (via the adoption of the
Directive 2017/541 on terrorism and the measures on ‘‘foreign fighters’’) seems likely to lead to
renewed litigation in Luxembourg (p. 262).
Further problematic questions may arise from the emphasis placed by Union’s recent legislation
on the rights of victims. Mitsilegas engages in an examination of these legal instruments and
evaluates their impact on national criminal justice systems. It is submitted that EU-wide minimum
standards on victims have been developed ‘‘largely in isolation from legislation on the rights of the
defendant’’ (p. 211). As several national experiences demonstrate, however, the enhancement of
the rights of the victims has fundamental implications for the balance of power in the criminal
justice process. Mitsilegas therefore advocates a more holistic approach as this would strike a
proper balance between the rights of victims and the position of suspects and defendants in
criminal proceedings.
Conclusively, Mitsilegas’ monograph brilliantly inaugurates the new series of publications on
EU criminal law promoted by ECLAN and published by Hart/Bloomsbury. The book offers an
impressive overview of the current state of play of EU criminal law, providing a useful tool for
students and practitioners wishing to deepen their knowledge of this fast-changing field. At the
same time, Mitsilegas’ book delivers a significant contribution to the academic debate on several
of the most sensitive issues underlying the complex process of integration of crimin al law in
Europe. One can only hope for a future reissue of the monograph, as new challenges facing the
evolution of EU criminal law desperately need clear and authoritative guidance.
The Limits of Asset Confiscation: On the Legitimacy of Extended Appropriation of Criminal Proceeds, Johan Boucht,
(London, UK: Hart Publishing, 2017), ISBN 9781509907090, 280 pp., £99
Reviewed by: Anton Moiseienko, Queen Mary University of London, UK
DOI: 10.1177/2032284417738360
Confiscation of criminally acquired wealth is one of the pillars of criminal justice, particularly
in the context of crimes that often involve large sums of illicit money, such as corruption and
organized criminal activities. Almost by definition, the primary objective of organized crim-
inal groups is to make money, and it is not uncommon to read about criminals who are hardly
deterred by the prospect of imprisonment but genuinely worry about their ill-gotten wealth
being taken away.
While it is entirely uncontroversial that the state may confiscate property proven to derive from
a crime of which a perpetrator has been convicted (‘regular’ confiscation), how far beyond that the
state may or should go is by no means clear-cut. It is that grey area of confiscation law that Johan
Boucht’s book The Limits of Asset Confiscation is concerned with. In this fine work, the author
sketches out the outer limits of confiscation by considering the legitimacy of what he calls the
‘extended appropriation’ of criminal proceeds, which is essentially defined in contradistinction to
‘regular’ confiscation.
More specifically, Boucht deals with two subsets of extended appropriation of criminal pro-
ceeds: extended criminal confiscation on the one hand and non-conviction based confiscation on
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