With ‘considerable regret’, the power of forfeiture and destruction conferred on the court by section 27 of 1971 Act did not apply to offences of conspiracy, and could not be used to provide a means of stripping professional drug-traffickers of the whole of their ill-gotten gains or the total profits of their unlawful enterprises. The forfeiture power applied only to tangible property (including drugs, apparatus, vehicles and ‘cash ready to be, or having just been, handed over for them’). It did not apply to intangible property, or to property situate abroad, and it did not authorise the court to follow or trace assets which could have been forfeited (but for the fact that they had been exchanged) into the other assets for which they had been exchanged.
Lord Diplock said: ‘Under English rules of conflict of laws it is in my view well established that an English court has no jurisdiction either in a criminal or a civil matter to make orders purporting ipso jure to transfer moveable property situate abroad.’
Judges:
Lord Diplock
Citations:
[1981] AC 470, [1980] 2 All ER 401, [1980] 3 WLR 89, (1980) 71 Cr App R 148
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – May, Regina v HL 14-May-2008
The defendant had been convicted of involvement in a substantial VAT fraud, and made subject to a confiscation order. He was made subject to a confiscation order in respect of the amounts lost to the fraud where he was involved, but argued that the . .
Cited – Perry and Others v Serious Organised Crime Agency SC 25-Jul-2012
The first appellant had been convicted of substantial frauds in Israel. He appealed against world wide asset freezing (PFO) and disclosure (DO) orders made against him. Neither the appellant, nor his offences were connected with the UK. A bank . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Practice
Updated: 07 May 2022; Ref: scu.267674