One Tuesday morning, a client finds out that his accounts have been blocked, that the flat he bought in 2019 has been noted with a seizure in the land register, and that his wife's car appears on the list in the order. He has not been convicted; he is not even a defendant, he is a suspect. His first question: “Have they confiscated everything from me?” The answer, which completely changes the discussion: nothing has been confiscated from him, it has been frozen.
These are three different things, and confusing them produces the worst decisions, from panic to hurried disposals of assets that themselves become offences. I see them confused constantly, including in the press and, occasionally, in procedural documents.
Basis: Articles 249-256 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Nature: procedural, provisional. Moment: at any point in the proceedings. Effect: the asset remains yours, but it is frozen. Link to the offence: probable.
Basis: Article 112 of the Criminal Code. Nature: a safety measure, final. Moment: by judgment. Effect: the asset passes to the state. Link to the offence: direct, proven.
Basis: Article 112¹ of the Criminal Code. Nature: a safety measure, final. Moment: by a conviction. Effect: the asset passes to the state. Link to the offence: presumed, based on disproportion.
Seizure blocks; confiscation takes. Only the latter takes your property, and only by a court judgment, at the end of the proceedings.
1. Precautionary measures: blocking, not taking. Governed by Articles 249-256 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, they consist in the precautionary seizure of assets: the asset remains yours, but you can no longer sell it, mortgage it or, in some cases, use it. The purpose, under Article 249(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, is threefold: securing confiscation (special or extended), the enforcement of a fine, and court costs or compensation for the loss. In tax evasion (evaziune fiscală) cases, the measure is mandatory (Article 11 of Legea nr. 241/2005). What matters: seizure does not presuppose guilt, it is imposed on a probable value and on a suspicion, and the time limit to challenge it is 3 days, the shortest and most often missed time limit in the entire file. For more detail, see the analysis on precautionary measures, the 3-day time limit and the challenge.
2. Special confiscation: the proven link. Article 112 of the Criminal Code targets assets in a direct and proven link with the offence: assets produced through the act provided for by criminal law, those used or intended to be used in committing it, those acquired through committing the act, and those whose possession is prohibited. The prosecution must prove the link: this asset, this act. Classic confiscation, with classic evidence.
3. Extended confiscation: the presumed link. This is where the paradigm shifts: Article 112¹ allows the confiscation of assets other than those under Article 112, assets for which there is no proven link to the offence for which you were convicted.
Not suspicion, not committal for trial. Extended confiscation is ordered only against a convicted person.
The act must be capable of procuring a material benefit for the offender, and the penalty provided by law must be imprisonment of 4 years or more.
The court must form the belief that the assets originate from criminal activities. The text expressly adds that this belief may be based, among other things, on the disproportion between the person's lawful income and their wealth.
Assets acquired within a 5-year period before, and, where applicable, after the time the offence was committed, up to the date the document referring the case to the court is issued.
“Assets” also include sums of money (paragraph (4)). In establishing the difference between lawful income and the value of the assets acquired, account is taken of the value at the date of acquisition and of the expenses incurred by the convicted person and by family members (paragraph (5)).
Money and other assets are confiscated up to the equivalent value (paragraph (6)), and their proceeds are confiscated as well (paragraph (7)).
The point most materials miss: the list no longer exists. Many sources, including some recent ones, describe extended confiscation as applying only to offences on an exhaustive list (drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, etc.). That is no longer the case. Through Legea nr. 228/2020, in force since 5 November 2020, the legislature abandoned the restrictive list: extended confiscation may be ordered for any offence capable of procuring a material benefit, punishable by law with imprisonment of 4 years or more.
The consequence for economic crime, with no illusions: tax evasion under Article 9 of Legea nr. 241/2005 (3-10 years, in the form given by Legea nr. 126/2024), embezzlement (delapidare) and money laundering (spălare de bani) (Article 295 of the Criminal Code, 2 to 7 years; Article 49 of Legea nr. 129/2019, 3 to 10 years) and EU funds fraud (Article 18¹ of Legea nr. 78/2000, 2 to 7 years) all meet the condition. The question is no longer “is it on the list?”, but: does the special maximum of the penalty provided by law reach 4 years?
The limit that protects: the cap under paragraph (8). The text contains an essential safeguard, invoked too rarely: confiscation cannot exceed the value of the assets acquired during the period provided for in paragraph (2), which exceeds the level of the convicted person's lawful income. The object of extended confiscation is not the person's wealth, but the unjustified excess: every leu of proven lawful income directly reduces the confiscable mass. And when the file also involves money laundering as an autonomous charge, the two asset calculations must be kept separate, because they are computed differently.
For the offence itself, the standard is the classic one: guilt must be proved beyond any reasonable doubt, and any doubt benefits the accused. For extended confiscation, the law requires something else: that the court form the belief that the assets originate from criminal activities, a belief that may be based, among other things, on disproportion.
The doctrinal criticism is a serious one: the mechanism effectively shifts the burden of proof. Once disproportion is found, it is the convicted person who must explain the origin of their wealth. It is a rebuttable presumption, but it is a presumption.
The European case-law counter-argument needs to be known, because you will meet it in indictments. In Gogitidze and Others v. Georgia (judgment of 12 May 2015), the European Court of Human Rights held that there are European and universal standards which encourage the confiscation of property linked to serious offences, corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking, including in the absence of a prior conviction, and that the burden of proving the lawful origin of assets presumed to have been acquired unlawfully may legitimately be shifted onto the persons concerned in confiscation proceedings of a non-criminal nature, including civil in rem proceedings. The nuance that matters: the Court validated the reversal of the burden of proof in civil proceedings, with the corresponding safeguards; it did not write a blank cheque for a presumption of unlawful origin applied in criminal proceedings.
Domestically, the Constitutional Court has intervened decisively on non-retroactivity: through Decision no. 356 of 25 June 2014 (Official Gazette no. 691 of 22 September 2014), it held that the provisions on extended confiscation are constitutional only in so far as they do not apply to assets acquired before Legea nr. 63/2012 came into force, that is, before 22 April 2012. A real practical reference point: the 5-year period cannot go back beyond that date. The constitutional reference points in this area remain the decisions given on earlier versions of the text, among which Decision no. 356/2014 has the most concrete practical effect; the constitutionality review of the current version should be checked, in each file, as it stands at the time.
The most common mistake is calculated silence: “I have no reason to explain where my money comes from, the state has to prove it.” For the offence, that statement is correct. For extended confiscation, it is correct only on paper. Once the court finds an obvious disproportion between lawful income and wealth, silence is no longer neutral: it leaves the disproportion unexplained, and the text expressly allows that very disproportion to found the court's belief. The defence against extended confiscation is not built on silence, but on documents.
Confiscation from third parties. Article 112¹(2), second sentence, provides that extended confiscation may also be ordered against assets transferred to third parties, if they knew or ought to have known that the purpose of the transfer was to avoid confiscation. Paragraph (3) adds that, for the application of these provisions, account is also taken of the value of assets transferred by the convicted person or by a third party to a family member or to a legal person controlled by the convicted person.
The practical translation: the flat “sold” to a brother during the criminal investigation, at a token price, is not a solution, it is evidence. The third party does, however, have their own standing in the proceedings and their own right to a defence: good faith is proved, and the “ought to have known” requirement is assessed against the actual circumstances, not the mere family relationship.
Directive (EU) 2024/1260 on the recovery and confiscation of assets was published in the Official Journal on 2 May 2024, with a transposition deadline of 23 November 2026, which, at the date of this analysis, had not yet expired. Transposition is coordinated by the Ministry of Justice, and Romania has notified the Commission of partial transposition through several normative acts; a dedicated draft law has been prepared. The stage reached should be checked as it stands, for each file.
The most discussed element is confiscation without a conviction (non-conviction based), regulated in Article 16: it should be possible when a final conviction cannot be obtained for reasons such as the illness, absconding or death of the suspected or accused person. The Directive also addresses the case of limitation periods shorter than 15 years expiring, under strict conditions: the proceedings must have been capable of leading to a conviction for an offence capable of generating substantial economic benefits, and the court must be satisfied that the assets originate from, or are linked to, the offence.
For the defence, what is at stake in the coming years is clear: the more confiscation becomes detached from conviction, the more procedural safeguards, the adversarial process, access to evidence, third-party rights, proportionality, become the last real filter.
ANABI and the risk of early disposal. The National Agency for the Management of Seized Assets (ANABI) manages movable assets seized in criminal proceedings and, in the cases provided by law, proceeds to their early disposal, on the order of the prosecutor, the judge for rights and freedoms, or the court. The risk is structural: the asset can be sold before any conviction. In practice, courts have granted applications for the early disposal of luxury cars even without the consent of the defendant owners.
If an acquittal follows, the sum obtained at auction is returned, not the asset. And the auction price and the real value almost never coincide. If you are notified of a proposal for early disposal, this is one of the few moments where a well-documented objection, on the asset's capacity to be preserved, on the absence of rapid depreciation, on the real costs of management, genuinely matters.
Not through statements, but through documents. Each document below arithmetically reduces the confiscable mass.
Filed on time, the best evidence, because it is pre-constituted and can be relied on against the state.
Those that explain the acquisitions: sale-purchase, loan (with proof of both disbursement and repayment), gift.
The complete money trail. Not convenient fragments, the trail, from source to acquisition.
Certificate of inheritance, will, partition deeds, including those from abroad.
Contracts, payslips, certificates of residence, taxes paid.
Not current ones; paragraph (5) expressly requires this, and the same paragraph also includes the family's expenses in the calculation.
Alongside these, three lines of defence. Challenging the disproportion calculation, which is, in essence, an accounting exercise, and an independent expert report that reworks the calculation on real sources is often the decisive evidence. The cap under paragraph (8), any excess above the lawful income is unlawful, regardless of the court's belief. Non-retroactivity, assets acquired before 22 April 2012 fall outside the scope of extended confiscation. The order in which these lines are set out is a matter of the general strategy for the defence in the criminal file.
Proportionality, third-party rights and the lifting of measures. Proportionality operates on two levels: for precautionary measures, the seizure cannot exceed the probable value of the loss (Article 249(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure), and the total shutdown of a company's activity destroys the very estate from which the loss would be made good; for extended confiscation, through the cap under paragraph (8). Third parties, an uninvestigated spouse, a co-owner, a good-faith purchaser, have standing as an interested person and their own right to challenge the measure. Spouses' joint assets can be seized only within the share of the investigated spouse; a seizure imposed indiscriminately on the whole asset can be challenged. Lifting the measures, Article 250² of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires periodic review (no later than 6 months during the criminal investigation and one year during trial) of whether the grounds still stand, with the possibility of maintaining, narrowing, extending or lifting the measure. In older files, the first thing I check is whether the measure has itself been reviewed.
Income that is declared and taxed is proven lawful income; income that is real but undeclared looks identical to unlawful income.
From relatives or friends: a written instrument, a certain date, a bank transfer, repayment. “My father gave it to me” is not evidence.
And the valuations from the time of purchase, because paragraph (5) refers to the value at that time, not today's value.
Fully, including inheritances from abroad. A real but undocumented inheritance is indistinguishable from a suspicious sum.
Once a criminal risk arises, this is the most effective way of triggering the application of paragraphs (2)-(3).
Treat the statement of assets and income with the utmost seriousness if it has been requested from you in a review of your personal tax position: it becomes the reference point for any discussion of your wealth, including the discussion on the 70% tax on unjustified income.
No. Seizure is a provisional measure: the house remains yours, but you cannot dispose of it or encumber it. Loss of ownership can only occur through confiscation, ordered by a court judgment at the end of the proceedings. The time limit to challenge the seizure is 3 days.
This is exactly the scope of extended confiscation: assets acquired within the 5-year period before the offence was committed, if their value obviously exceeds lawful income and the court is satisfied that they originate from criminal activities. If you prove lawful origin, declared income, an inheritance, a genuine loan, the asset falls out of the calculation, and confiscation cannot exceed the excess over lawful income.
Yes. Following Legea nr. 228/2020, the exhaustive list of offences was removed. The current test has two parts: the act must be capable of procuring a material benefit, and the penalty provided by law must be 4 years or more. Tax evasion under Article 9 (3-10 years), embezzlement (2-7 years) and money laundering (3-10 years) all meet it. Many materials online still reproduce the old list.
The sum obtained from the sale is returned, not the asset. This is the main criticism levelled at early disposal, and the reason why such a proposal must be challenged when it is made, not after the auction.
Not necessarily. Extended confiscation can also be ordered against assets transferred to third parties, if they knew or ought to have known that the purpose of the transfer was to avoid confiscation, and the law expressly provides that account is also taken of the value of assets transferred to a family member or to a controlled legal person. A transfer at a token price, made during the criminal investigation, is not a solution, it is evidence. The third party does, however, have their own right to a defence, and their good faith can be proved.
Informative material, updated on 18 July 2026. It does not constitute legal advice; individual situations must be assessed on their own facts. Every person under investigation is presumed innocent until a conviction becomes final.
If the matter involves a criminal complaint or an open file, the related analyses are grouped under economic criminal law. For how the defence is built, see economic crime defence.
Time limits run from the date of communication. A first conversation clarifies what is being alleged, what you need to substantiate and how the defence is built, before an estimate becomes a tax assessment decision.