Among the key strategies in taking the financial incentive out of criminal activity are freezing, seizing, and confication of assets--better known as asset forfeiture. This book is a how--to, practical guide to the common legal and practical issues faced by the asset forfeiture litigator.

Asset Forfeiture Law in the United States - Second Edition serves as both a primer on forfeiture law for the newcomer to this area, as well as a handy resource for anyone needing a comprehensive discussion of any of the recurring and evolving forfeiture issues that arise daily in federal practice. The author is one of the federal government's leading experts on asset forfeiture law. As a federal prosecutor, he has been litigating asset forfeiture cases since the late 1980's, was a Deputy Chief of the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section for many years, and is now the Chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Baltimore, MD. Asset Forfeiture Law in the United States - Second Edition is a completely revised and up-to-date treatise that addresses important changes and significant developments in civil and criminal forfeiture law. Every chapter has been rewritten as a result of the explosive growth in this area of law and practice. This comprehensive one-volume resource examines and explores the outpouring of new case law stemming from federal law enforcement agencies that include the FBI, DEA, IRS and Homeland Security. The Second Edition continues to lead the practitioner, prosecutor, judge and policy maker through the labyrinth of statues, rules and cases that govern this dynamic area of the law. Many countries in Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as Australia and the Americas, have enacted asset forfeiture statutes modeled on U.S. law, making the cases interpreting the statutes relevant beyond the borders of the United States.

. . . this work is an important contribution to the global discourse on pursuing property, money or resources linked to crime. Michelle Gallant, Journal of Business Law Informed and informative, Civil Forfeiture of Criminal Property is a seminal work of impressive scholarship and strongly recommended for professional, academic, and governmental judicial studies collections in general, and criminal justice reference collections in particular. Library Bookwatch, Midwest Book Review This book is interesting because there is a dearth of writing on the subject. It must be read for that reason. Sally Ramage, The Criminal Lawyer Once called the monster that ate jurisprudence , civil forfeiture is now an established weapon in the fight against organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking and corruption. This fine collection of essays covering civil forfeiture regimes in ten diverse jurisdictions, written by leading practitioners, provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of the jurisprudential, legal, political and practical dimensions of the new generation of these powerful and controversial laws. I commend this book to criminal, civil, comparative and human rights lawyers who have an interest in how serious and profit-motivated crime, and responses to it, develop over time and in different legal cultures. Arie Freiberg, Monash University, Australia In this book, which is the first of its kind, leading experts examine the civil and criminal forfeiture systems in Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the fight against organized crime and international money laundering, there is a global trend for countries to enact forfeiture and confiscation laws that are applied through the civil process rather than the traditional criminal justice system. The authors gathered here analyze the appeal these civil forfeiture laws have for governments for their potential to disrupt criminal organizations and for their quantifiable benefits to the state. But without the usual safeguards of the criminal process, civil forfeiture laws are controversial, attracting constitutional challenges, particularly on human rights grounds. This book will be of great interest to policy-makers in government, and law enforcement agencies who are thinking of reforming their own laws, as well as to law reform agencies or select parliamentary committees where the issue of reform is topical. It will also appeal to students in criminal law, criminology and human rights.

This book is a first-of-its-kind, practice-based guide of 36 key concepts?legal, operational, and practical--that countries can use to develop non-conviction based (NCB) forfeiture legislation that will be effective in combating the development problem of corruption and recovering stolen assets.

Leonard Levy traces the development and implementation of forfeiture and contends that it is a questionable practice, which, because it is so often abused, serves only to undermine civil society. Arguing that civil forfeiture is unconstitutional, Levy provides examples of the victimization of innocent people and demonstrates that it has been used primarily against petty offienders rather than against its original targets, members of organized crime.