Parliament to tighten rules for convicts trying to flee country

Parliament will examine, in the first reading, a set of legislative measures aimed at preventing cases in which convicted persons evade the execution of their sentence and leave the country. The report on the draft law setting out the actions in this respect was approved today by the legal committee on rules and immunities.

The document was drafted by the Ministry of Justice and aims to eliminate certain dysfunctions that may occur between the moment coercive procedural measures are ordered and the stage of sentence execution.

One of the proposed amendments obliges the court to order, ex officio, the issuance of a search notice for the convicted person who is absent at the pronouncement of the sentence, together with the simultaneous application of a travel ban. According to the authors, this measure will reduce the risk that the convicted person will take advantage of the time interval to go into hiding or to leave the country.

Another proposal provides for amending the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure by incriminating the act of escape from house arrest. Currently, the Criminal Code sanctions only escape from places of detention. The amendment will provide law enforcement bodies with a legal basis to search the person immediately after the violation is established, allowing the authorities to intervene promptly and apply the procedures provided by law, including special investigative measures.


“This legislative inconsistency generates a regulatory gap that prevents the application of proportionate criminal sanctions in cases of violations of house arrest, seriously affecting the authority of court decisions and the safety of criminal proceedings,” the explanatory note to the legislative initiative states.


The draft also extends the use of electronic monitoring in cases where there is an obligation not to leave the locality or the country, as well as in cases of provisional release under judicial supervision. At the same time, clear rules are established regarding the intervention of authorities in the event of an alert, technical malfunctions or damage to monitoring devices.

The authors also propose increasing the amount of the security posted by organizations. Currently, it is equal to the security posted by individuals, ranging between 15,000 and 50,000 lei. According to the explanatory note, this disproportionality encourages the formal use of an organization’s security to the detriment of personal security, without providing the state with sufficient property guarantees in relation to the risk that the defendant will evade justice. Therefore, it is proposed to increase the amount of the security posted by organizations and set it between 50,000 and 150,000 lei. Bail 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 in criminal procedure legislation of the institution of travel bans in both its forms – informational and at the border. This will ensure interoperability between judicial bodies and administrative institutions.

After adoption, the legislative amendments will enter into force three months after their publication in the Official Journal.