GREECE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Ovvadias S. Namias, Vasileios Petropoulos, Ilias Spyropoulos and Emmanouil V. Apostolakis, Ovvadias S. Namias Law Firm
or interest in such property, which the issuing authority considers to be: • the proceeds of a criminal offence, or its equivalent, whether the full amount of the value or only part of the value of such pro - ceeds; • the instrumentalities of a criminal offence, or the value of such instrumentalities; • subject to confiscation through the applica - tion in the issuing state of any of the pow - ers of confiscation provided for in Directive 2014/42/EU; or • subject to confiscation under any other provisions relating to powers of confisca - tion, including confiscation without a final conviction, under the law of the issuing state, following proceedings in relation to a criminal offence. It is worth noting that Article 3 of the Regula - tion contains a list of 32 categories of offences for which mutual recognition and enforcement of freezing and confiscation orders apply, irre - spective of the existence of double criminality, No 8 of which concerns fraud offences. In order to simplify the recognition and enforce - ment procedure, the Regulation provides that it is sufficient for the freezing or confiscation certificate (completed and signed by the issu - ing authority) to be transmitted to the executing authority, without specifying a particular form for the transmission of the certificate, provided that it is evidenced in writing and enables the execut - ing authority to verify their authenticity. At the same time, for reasons of speed and efficient co-operation between states, it is provided that the executing authority shall recognise the rel - evant decision and take the necessary measures for its execution without further formalities in the same way as when a domestic freezing order is
executed. In other words, the rule of locus regit actum applies. Concerning the temporal parameter, the execut - ing authority must execute the foreign judgment without delay as soon as it receives the transmit - ted certificate. If the issuing authority declares that the freezing is urgent, either because of the risk of the disappearance of the property or because of the need for an investigation, the executing state must complete the execution within 48 hours. It is worth briefly mentioning that the executing state may refuse to execute freezing and con - fiscation orders if, exceptionally, the relevant grounds for doing so exist, such as: • the violation of the ne bis in idem principle; • the existence of any immunity; • the existence of any deficiencies and mani - fest errors in the certificate; • the non-existence of double jeopardy; and • the manifest violation of fundamental rights. Returning to the specific issue at hand – namely asset tracing when the offence is fraud in rela - tion to cryptocurrencies – it is worth pointing out that, despite the fact that both national and European legislation provides for the freezing and confiscation of intangible assets (including crypto-assets) when they are directly or indi - rectly derived from a criminal act, the success - ful implementation of the relevant provisions can prove challenging in practice. This is due to: • the fact that the detection of crypto-assets is particularly difficult and requires (in any case) the co-operation of the judicial and adminis - trative authorities with the Cybercrime Direc - torate of the Greek Police; and
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