Victim Asset Recovery

Recovery Strategy

Asset recovery is race against time. In first 24-72 hours after offense becomes known, responsible usually attempts to hide or transfer assets. Our methodology activates simultaneously: urgent complaint with real precautionary measure request, patrimonial location through OSINT and financial intelligence, orders to banking entities, and when applicable, wallet freezing on exchanges.

Real Precautionary Measures

• Preventive seizure: On movable property, real estate, vehicles and credit rights identified.
• Bank account blocking: Urgent court order to avoid transfers.
• Prohibition on disposing: On real estate, vehicles or registry corporate participations.
• Judicial intervention of companies: When legal person is offense instrument.
• Provisional forfeiture: On assets clearly identified as crime proceeds.

Forfeiture

Arts. 127 et seq. CP forfeiture allows judge to order decommissioning of assets, effects and proceeds that are crime products. After conviction, those assets are applied preferentially to satisfy victim's ex delicto civil liability (Art. 127 octies CP).

Foreign Assets

For assets in other EU states we apply EU Regulation 2018/1805 on freezing and forfeiture, allowing execution of Spanish orders in very brief timeframes (48h for freezing). Outside EU: letters rogatory, FIU-to-FIU cooperation, World Bank STAR Conventions for tax haven recovery.

Responsible Insolvency

When responsible insolvent or precautionary measures arrive late, we activate alternative routes: subsidiary civil liability of companies, organisms, financial entities (Arts. 120-122 CP); applicable civil liability insurance; Insurance Compensation Consortium in traffic offenses; State economic aids per Law 35/1995.

Preventive attachment and early securing of assets

In practice, asset recovery is decided in the first weeks of the proceedings: if the liable party's estate is not frozen early, an eventual conviction may become a declaration with no real economic content. For this reason, the separate civil-liability strand and the real precautionary measures are the personated victim's first priority. The Law of Criminal Procedure (LECrim) allows a request for a bond and, failing that, the attachment of assets in an amount sufficient to cover the civil liability and costs, and empowers the investigating judge to order the preventive registration of attachment over real estate, the freezing of accounts and the seizure of other assets and rights.

To succeed, the application must establish the fumus boni iuris (evidence linking the party to the act and to the harm) and the periculum in mora (risk of concealment or dissipation), and propose specific assets to attach. The private prosecution may submit financial information, request orders to registries, financial institutions and the Tax Agency, and seek the disclosure of beneficial ownership to uncover frontmen. The order granting or refusing attachment may be challenged by an appeal for reconsideration and, in the alternative, an ordinary appeal; the affected party may offer a substitute bond or seek a reduction in the amount. Acting diligently from the first statement is what separates a real recovery from an uncollectable judgment.

Confiscation: types, requirements and the third party's position

Confiscation (Arts. 127 to 127 octies of the Criminal Code) is the tool that strips the liable party of the effects, assets, means and instruments of the offence and of the proceeds obtained, whatever their transformation. Alongside direct confiscation there are far-reaching variants: value-based confiscation where the assets cannot be seized; extended confiscation, reaching the convicted person's estate for certain offences where lawful origin is not justified against indications of a criminal source; third-party confiscation, against those who acquired assets knowing or having reason to know their unlawful origin; and non-conviction-based (autonomous) confiscation in the cases set out by law, for example where the subject is in default, deceased or exempt from liability.

For the victim, confiscation is not an end in itself: confiscated assets and proceeds are applied, on a preferential basis, to satisfy the civil liability arising from the offence, so that confiscation reinforces reparation. The defence of the affected party or the good-faith third party should focus on disputing the asset's connection to the act, the ownership and the knowledge of its origin, and on asserting the right to be heard. A third party whose assets may be affected must be summoned to the proceedings as a party in order to plead and prove good faith, an essential safeguard whose omission may vitiate the measure. Proportionality and respect for the estate of unconnected third parties are limits the court must weigh.

Civil liability ex delicto: restitution, repair and indemnity

The duty to make good the harm caused by the offence is governed by Arts. 109 to 115 of the Criminal Code and has three components: restitution of the same asset wherever possible (Art. 111), repair of the harm in the form determined by the court according to its nature (Art. 112), and indemnity for material and moral damage, reaching not only the injured party but also harmed third parties (Art. 113). The criminal court must rule on civil liability even where it has not been expressly quantified, and may set the bases for liquidating it during enforcement of the judgment where the amount cannot be fixed in the ruling itself.

The victim may bring the civil action within the criminal proceedings by appearing as a private prosecution, or reserve it for a later civil action; it is not lost by mere failure to appear, since the Public Prosecutor also exercises it in the victim's interest unless there is express waiver or reservation. Alongside the perpetrator, accomplices are liable in the proportion fixed by the court and, where applicable, subsidiarily liable parties (Arts. 116 and 120) and insurers up to the limit of cover. Properly quantifying the loss, providing documentary and expert evidence of the harm and countering attempts to minimise the amount is the decisive technical task of the private prosecution.

The Asset Recovery and Management Office (ORGA) and enforcement

ORGA, a body of the Justice Administration, assists judges, courts and prosecutors in locating, preserving, managing and realising assets affected by attachment or confiscation. It may act on judicial instruction to trace assets, take over the management of seized property and, where appropriate, proceed to its early realisation —for example where the assets risk depreciating or their preservation is burdensome— paying the proceeds into a deposit account pending the outcome of the case. Its involvement aims to ensure that assets neither deteriorate nor lose value while the case is being heard.

At the enforcement stage, what has been confiscated and attached is applied to satisfy the victim's civil liability on a preferential basis, before any award to the State or application to the purposes provided by law. Throughout the proceedings the injured party retains the right to be informed of the status of the secured assets, to challenge management or realisation decisions that prejudice it, and to seek improved attachment where the assets seized prove insufficient. An effective strategy combines early appearance, following the asset trail, coordination with ORGA and active oversight of the enforcement stage through to the actual collection of the indemnity.