A Tentative Study On Corruption Assets Recovery Mechanism

Confronting the increasing growth of corruption problems in world society, "UN Convention against Corruption" was unveiled and came into effect at the end of 2005, which by now has been contracted by 107 countries including China, and become first legal document in UN history to guide the international struggle against corruption ail-roundly. To prevent and punish corruption, five mechanisms are established, among which the Corruption Assets Recovery Mechanism is the highlight and innovation in the Convention. The past conventions and international treaties against corruption lack rules on recovering corruption assets flight which are roughly attached to extradition clauses. To deal with the severe corruption assets flight situation in all countries, assets recovery has been raised as a fundamental principle, and comprehensively built as systematical mechanism in the Convention, offering legal basis and action guide for contracting states to recover corruption assets flight. Studying on the innovative mechanism of assets recovery in the Convention, seeing our country's current growing spread of corruption assets flight, this paper is aimed at making better use of the assets recovery mechanism introduced in the Convention to seek for more comprehensive international cooperation and available legal measures to prevent and recover corruption assets flight, and finally to achieve maximum recovery of corruption assets and defense of national and people's economic interests.Based on forerunners' achievements on assets recovery mechanism, this paper is focused on analyzing the links of assets recovery mechanism established in the Convention, including the precondition, the approaches and the reality of assets recovery, and compared with related domestic laws, demonstrating how to establish and improve our own assets recovery mechanism under the framework of the Convention. The whole paper is composed with six sections. The first one, fundamental theory overview of assets recovery mechanism, in the first place, defines the assets recovery analyzes the categories and scopes of corruption and the corresponding assets used in the Convention; then introduce the relevant terminology of assets recovery mechanism, making preparations for the for the following discussion, at last expounds the features and meaning of corruption assets recovery mechanism. The second one, preventive measures for corruption assets recovery. It is the precondition of assets recovery to prevent and detect the transfers of criminal proceeds. This paper according to what stipulated by the Convention, and presents out views about how to prevent and detect the transfers of criminal proceeds by discussing how to specify obligations, which requires financial institutions to verify the identity of customers, conducting enhanced scrutiny of accounts and recording adequately about transition of public officials and relevant persons, public officials to declare their property and each state to strengthen supervision on financial institutions and public officials. The third one, measures for assets recovery. It is the focus of this paper, analyzing the direct measure and indirect one for assets recovery. Both of two measures require the international cooperation. So, make further elaboration about international cooperation for assets recovery. The forth one, the final realization of assets recovery. Assets recovery is finally realized by returning and disposing of properties, and it is the last process of assets recovery. It refers to cost compensating for legal assistance provided by the requested State Party and benefit sharing. The paper makes brief analysis based on the Convention and gets conclusion that cost compensating and benefit sharing that tally with the profits of the requesting State Party and the requested State Party are feasible. The fifth part, construct and consummate Chinese assets recovery system. Although our country is one of the contracting states to the convention, the Convention could not be adopted directly, while it should be conversed to our domestic laws at first. We need to revise and perfect domestic laws contrasting to the Convention. The paper raises proposals from six aspects about perfecting our domestic legal system on the basis of researching assets recovery mechanism of the Convention and analyzing our relative present domestic laws. The sixth one, conclusion. The Convention has built a scientific and systemic assets recovery mechanism. If we want to make full use of the Convention, recover the fleeing assets to the limit and proceed widely international cooperation during this process, we still need to perfect relative domestic legal system of our country based on meticulously research about the Convention and domestic laws, then we could make more achievements in preventing the corruption assets flight and assets recovery.