In the Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia No. 53/24, the new Law on confiscation of property in civil proceedings was published. The enactment of this law aims to protect the public interest of the Republic of North Macedonia in a way that prevents any benefit from property, which in the civil procedure in accordance with the law, will be determined not to have been acquired from legal sources. This law limits the right to property in accordance with the Constitution, the law and international standards and the practice of the ECtHR for this type of confiscation. The purpose of this law is to prevent the disposal of property and property benefits that cannot be proven to have been acquired from legal sources.
According to the provisions of the law, a condition for starting the procedure for determining property whose acquisition cannot be proven to be from legal sources is if there is a reasonable doubt that there is property whose acquisition cannot be proven to be from legal sources and there is a disproportion between the net – the value of the property and the available legal and reported income for the acquisition of the property, expressed as a cumulative difference that exceeds 13,000 euros in Denar equivalent according to the average exchange rate of the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia, calculated annually in a period of time not longer than 10 years before the acquisition of the property that is the subject of the procedure, i.e. the actions for the commission of a criminal offense for which there is a reasonable suspicion that it is related, respectively it is a source of funds for the acquisition of the property. The law entered into force on the eighth day from the day of publication in the “Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia”, and it will begin to be applied after the expiration of six months from the day of entry into force.