Over 60 percent of the R210-million in assets seized by the Directorate of Public Prosecutions' Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) is to be paid back to those who lost the money through criminal activities. "Our major aim is to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains ... and associated with that is a strong view that, where there is a victim, that victim should be compensated," AFU chief Willie Hofmeyr said in an interview with Sapa on Sunday.
Because the AFU seizes assets belonging to, among others, drug dealers and people involved in other "victimless" crimes, money which does not have an identifiable recipient goes into a special fund - the Criminal Assets Recovery Account. Money from the fund has, by law, to be used to combat crime or for "victim empowerment", such as the establishment of drug rehabilitation centres. Hofmeyr said the AFU had already returned over R1.1 million to victims in two of its finalised cases. The unit does not claim its own costs from regained funds, but does pay external costs before returning the money.
Source: News 24
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