Changes in assets, obligation to notify also successions

The obligation to disclose the asset variations of persons guilty of organised crime offences or subject to a prevention measure, with the consequent criminal relevance of its violation, also applies to acquisitions deriving from a inheritance. This was clarified by the United Criminal Sections in Judgment No. 18474 filed yesterday.

The judgment emphasises the rational basis of the obligation to communicate criminally sanctioned, given that the crime committed (or the ascertainment of dangerousness during the prevention procedure) concretises a condition of latent dangerousness that imposes a period of observation and special attention on the subject's patrimonial initiatives. The communication then makes possible a timely control on the origin of the increases or on the cause of the decreases, to protect the protected legal asset, identified in the public order.

In the event of failure to notify the variation, if criminally relevant, the legislator provides for a form of penalty confiscation, 'within the scope of which the possible demonstration of the lawfulness of the asset increase is not relevant: the conviction is followed, in fact, by the confiscation of the assets for whatever reason acquired as well as the consideration for the assets for whatever reason disposed of'.

The Unified Sections then valorise a precedent of the Constitutional Court (judgment no. 81 of 2014), whereby any lack of reasonableness to the offence is denied, according to the parameter of offensiveness "in the abstract", in fact, for the Constitutional Court, "constant monitoring of the assets of dangerous persons burdened by the legislator with the obligation in question is necessary; monitoring that cannot be ensured by the registration and transcription of the acts that determine the patrimonial variations".

Considering the nature of the crime of presumed danger, the control of the judge on the offensiveness of the specific conduct under consideration is also recalled. For the Unified Sections, the Constitutional Court holds firm on one point: the subjective dangerousness, deriving from the previous ascertainment of the specific offence (or of the condition of recipient of the measure of prevention), constitutes the justification for the obligation to communicate the variation, differentiating the treatment with respect to ordinary citizens.