The mandatory punishment of property confiscation is not in accordance with the Slovak Constitution. This was decided by the Constitutional Court on Tuesday. Two provisions of the Penal Code were challenged in the court back in 2021 by a group of lawmakers, mostly from the Smer-SD party. According to the provisions, courts are legally required to confiscate the property of convicts in cases concerning drug-related crimes, money laundering, the founding and orchestrating of criminal and terrorist groups and bribery. This punitive property confiscation also applies to property that has been acquired legally. The group of lawmakers find such punishments cruel, inappropriate and unfair, constituting a disproportionate interference with ownership rights.
According to the President of the Constitutional Court Ivan Fiačan, the provision of the Penal Code concerning property confiscation is in collision with the constitutional principle of the proportionality of the sentence. The reason for that is that the Penal Code replaces the principle of proportionality with a universally applicable punishment of confiscation and does not allow any another option.
Source: TASR, RTVS
