Convicted persons trying to evade serving sentence to be subject to stricter legislative measures

Persons convicted who attempt to evade serving their sentence and leave the country will be subject to stricter legislative measures. Parliament adopted today, in the first reading, a set of legislative measures designed to prevent such cases.

The document was presented by the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Justice, Mihai Gheorghieș. The official emphasized that the draft introduces prompt interventions meant to remove existing dysfunctions, from the stage of criminal investigation to that of the execution of sentences.

“The draft aims to amend and supplement the criminal, criminal procedure and penal enforcement legislation. Thus, it seeks to simplify the operative mechanisms for announcing wanted persons who have been sentenced to imprisonment, simultaneously with the pronouncement of the sentence, in order to minimize the risk of their evasion in the time interval immediately following the pronouncement of the decision,” noted Mihai Gheorghieș.

The draft also strengthens the mechanism for supervising the execution of preventive measures by integrating electronic monitoring into the control procedure, as well as by establishing clear rules of response in the event of alerts being generated or monitoring devices being destroyed.

“The document transforms criminal procedure mechanisms into a digitized and interconnected system, with the aim of discouraging the evasion of persons from the execution of preventive measures or custodial sentences, while guaranteeing respect for fundamental rights and freedoms,” added Mihai Gheorghieș.

The initiative also proposes increasing the amount of the guarantee deposited by organizations. At present, it is equal to the value of the guarantee deposited by natural persons, ranging between 15,000 and 50,000 lei. Thus, this disproportionality favors the formal use of an organization’s guarantee to the detriment of a personal guarantee, without providing the state with sufficient patrimonial guarantees in relation to the risk of the defendant’s evasion. Therefore, it is proposed to increase the amount of the guarantee deposited by organizations, setting it between 50,000 and 150,000 lei. Bail amounts will be managed by the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency through the Automated Information System “Register of confiscated criminal assets”.

Another measure proposed to strengthen procedural monitoring is the integration into criminal procedure legislation of the institution of the travel ban (consemn), in both its forms – notification and at the border. In this way, interoperability between judicial bodies and administrative institutions will be ensured. The draft law will be submitted to Parliament for examination in the second reading. After adoption, the legislative amendments will enter into force three months after publication in the Official Journal.