Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro signs the Asset Forfeiture Law at Miraflores Palace, Caracas, April 27, 2023. Photo: Presidential Press.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, signed the Organic Law on Asset Forfeiture, which will allow the government to take actions on assets originating from corruption. The law was handed over to the president by the head of the National Assembly (AN), Jorge Rodríguez, on Friday, April 28, after it had been approved unanimously by the AN.
At the handing over ceremony at the Miraflores Palace, Rodríguez explained that the law consists of 48 complete and exhaustive articles “which include the guarantees of the people subject to this law, the procedures of asset seizure. The most important feature of this law is that it was given an organic character.”
In the Venezuelan legal framework, organic laws have primacy over regular laws.
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Earlier, the Supreme Court of Justice declared the constitutional and organic nature of the new law, explaining that “it conforms to the legal characteristics of organic laws, in terms of form and content.”
Luego de sancionada por la @Asamblea_Ven, la Sala Constitucional del @TSJ_Venezuela recibe la Ley y declara la constitucionalidad del carácter orgánico de la Ley Orgánica de Extinción de Dominio, en cumplimiento del art. 203 de la #CRBV y 25, num 14, de la Ley Orgánica del #TSJ pic.twitter.com/nyRlKD8D08
— Tania D´Amelio Cardiet (@taniadamelio) April 28, 2023
Rodríguez highlighted the process of extensive consultation that preceded the approval of the law, in which “prosecutors, judges, and representatives of the Community Councils were involved, and that 128 proposals were submitted for the second discussion.
“This law that we are delivering after that consultation consists of 46 articles, two transitory provisions, and a final provision,” the National Assembly president specified.
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President Maduro thanked the National Assembly for the urgency with which it had worked on the law, and stressed that this will be the first law to “hit very hard the corrupt mafias that have tried to position themselves on the stage of national life.”
He reiterated his government’s willingness to “go all out in the fight against stealing, the mafias, the corrupt, wherever they are and whoever they are. This is a reality that our actions confirm.”
(Últimas Noticias) by Kleybergel González
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
