Certain Aspects of Arrest of Property in Light of the Case Law of the Appeal Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court

Abstract

The article explores the problems of a temporary seizure and arrest of property in the course of pre-trial investigation in light of the case law of the Appellate Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court and the European Court of Human Rights. It is outlined that investigators face particular problems with differentiation of material objects that are subject to seizure upon the decision of an investigator or a prosecutor and may be used for the purposes of the criminal proceedings and those which fall into the category of temporarily seized property, and the legality of their seizure is subject to control by an investigating judge. Investigating judges face the same difficulties which result in decisions on arrest imposed on biological, biometric traces, cigarette butts and other material objects that are not subject to arrest for they do not belong to the category of property. The author analyses whether documents, personal notes, and other items of the kind may be regarded as property and the criteria to categorize them as such. It is concluded that if these items are used as evidence in the criminal proceedings but have no characteristics of property, are not objects of civil rights, have no historical, artistic, scientific, literary, economic, or any other significant value in general or for a certain individual, they are not subject to judicial control and arrest and should be attached to the criminal proceedings in accordance with the rules prescribed by the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine.The author pays particular attention to the unfortunate wording of Part 7 of Article 236 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine, which prescribes that seized objects and documents not included in the list of items to be found in the course of a search, contained in the decision of the investigating judge onpermission to conduct a search, are considered temporarily seized property. This legal norm makes the issue of whether certain items belong to the category of property dependent upon their inclusion in thelist or absence in the list, contained in the decision of the investigating judge. Such an approach contradicts the basic principles of the property law. Therefore, the norm should be excluded from Part 7 of Article 236 of the Code. The author also suggests to change the wording of Part 7 of Article 237 of the Code and to clearly outline that documents, as a general rule, are seized and items that fall into the category of property are temporarily seized.The suggested approach will lead to harmonization of the norms of criminal procedural law with those of civil law, setting clear and understandable criteria for defining the legal status of items seized or temporarily seized in the course of examination or search and fulfilling the tasks of effective and impartial pre-trial investigation.