Armenia’s Prosecutor General discusses recovery of illegally acquired assets at CIS meeting

Prosecutor General of the Republic of Armenia Anna Vardapetyan participated online in the 36th session of the Coordinating Council of Prosecutors General of the CIS member states.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said in a press release that, within the framework of the first agenda item, Prosecutor General Vardapetyan delivered a speech on the topic “Modern Challenges and New Solutions in the Field of Recovery of Illegally Acquired Assets from Abroad.”

Vardapetyan noted that the transnational nature of modern crime creates new challenges for states: assets acquired through illegal means may be transferred to different countries, registered in the names of affiliated persons, and transformed into other types of property.

“Under these conditions, asset recovery should be viewed as a comprehensive process, from their identification and tracing to freezing or seizure, judicial examination, forfeiture, management and actual return,” the Prosecutor General of Armenia emphasized, adding that the impossibility of criminal prosecution should not automatically mean the impossibility of recovering illegally acquired assets. In this context, the Prosecutor General of the Republic addressed the mechanism of non-conviction based asset forfeiture.

Anna Vardapetyan presented Armenia’s experience, noting that the adoption of the Law “On Forfeiture of Property of Illicit Origin” in 2020 established a legal basis for applying an independent civil-law mechanism for the recovery of illegally acquired property.

In this context, emphasizing the effectiveness of international legal assistance, the Prosecutor General of Armenia stressed that international cooperation should begin as early as the asset identification and tracing stage, making it possible to promptly freeze, seize and preserve it until the completion of national judicial proceedings.

Anna Vardapetyan also addressed the significance of the Council of Europe’s Warsaw Convention and its additional protocol adopted in 2026, emphasizing that representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Armenia directly participated in the drafting of the protocol.

The Prosecutor General of Armenia also presented problems arising in the course of international cooperation, related to differences between the legal systems of various states, the absence of analogous mechanisms for civil-law forfeiture, as well as limitations on the subsequent use as evidence of information obtained through unofficial means.

In this direction, Vardapetyan emphasized the importance of further developing international cooperation, highlighting the rapid exchange of information on assets, improvement of mechanisms for the prompt freezing and seizure of property, ensuring the possibility of international legal assistance before a final judicial decision is made, mutual recognition and enforcement of judicial acts, as well as effective management of forfeited assets.

Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetyan noted that asset recovery today is no longer merely a matter of forfeiting property after the completion of criminal proceedings.

“This is a comprehensive process that begins with the identification of an asset, locating its whereabouts and tracing it, and ends with the actual return of the asset. Our common goal is to ensure that no legal vacuum arises between the identification of an asset and its actual return,” she said.