Today we will pay attention to one of the most difficult stages of criminal proceedings, and the return of confiscated property during the search. After all, as practice shows, most of the existing criminal proceedings are based on the evidence that was obtained during the search.
During the search, it should be expected that law enforcement officers confiscate "as much as possible" property, often ignoring the law.
In order to effectively return your property, it is necessary to conduct the search as well as possible, ie to record all violations committed by law enforcement agencies during the search, to record them correctly and to attach them to the search report.
For an effective mechanism to protect your property rights, you must first establish to which of the conditional groups can be attributed the confiscated property.
Seized property can be divided into:
- property in respect of which an arrest petition has been filed with the court, ie seized property;
- property, the seizure of which was not imposed;
- property seized during the search and recognized as material evidence without seizure.
Only after you have determined according to which group your property has been confiscated, you will be able to build a protection strategy, and therefore take the necessary steps to return it.
In view of the above, we recommend that you treat the following responsibly:
1. to get acquainted with the court decision on granting the right to conduct a search, in particular, with the list of things that can be confiscated;
2. in case of seizure of things that are not specified in the court decision to write comments on the search report in this regard;
3. keep a list of seized items during the search;
4. after the seizure to monitor what status the investigator has given to the seized property and what procedural actions he has taken or should take;
5. take an active position in the process of property restitution, appealing to the court every procedural action or omission.
Daria Vasina , lawyer Dynasty Law & Investment.
