On 29-30 October, the 4th EuroMed Justice Network (EMJNet) meeting was held at the Ministry of Justice of Spain in Madrid.
Forty-five criminal justice representatives from eight South Partner Countries (SPCs) and nine European Union Member States gathered to share knowledge and exchange best practices on international judicial cooperation related to the different stages of asset recovery. The meeting focused on asset tracing; asset freezing; asset confiscation and asset management and disposal (reverted to the relevant state, shared among the respective states or returned to the victim).
Representatives from UNICRI and the leader of the Economic Crimes Team at Eurojust also presented international and European recommendations and standards, best practises and challenges on these topics.
Participants also discussed their national asset tracking systems and presented relevant cross border cases.
Over both days, the objectives of EMJNet were reintroduced by the EMJ PMT . EMJNet, the cross-Mediterranean network of criminal justice practitioners aims to strengthen the contacts and the operational cooperation between criminal justice authorities from SPCs and EU Member States. EMJNet acts as the operational network of the EMJ Project and is composed of contact points who are active intermediaries facilitating judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
The participants also benefited from the presentation of Spain’s Asset Management Office by its two Deputy Directors.