european journal of crime, criminal law and criminal justice 22 (2014) 13-32 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/15718174-22012037 brill.com/eccl Improving the Recovery of Assets Resulting from Organised Crime Patricia Faraldo Cabana1 Department of Public Law, University of A Coruña, La Maestranza, s/n, E-15001 A Coruña, Spain Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Günterstalstrasse 73. D-79100 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany patricia.faraldo@udc.es Abstract Over the last few years, the international community as well as States have committed themselves to improving mechanisms for preventing and repressing money-launder- ing and for confiscation, in particular in the context of organised crime. In spite of this standardising effort, in several national systems the level of application of the offence of money laundering by judges and courts is less than satisfactory. Existing legal mech- anisms aimed at confiscating assets of criminal origin are not giving the expected results. The intended aim of this work is to put forward solutions to the practical chal- lenges in order to help legal measures being effective in practice, taking into account the differences between national legal cultures. In order to define the topic, after an introduction to the difficulties of implementing international standards, the paper focuses in particular on overcoming internal obstacles, not on aspects relating to inter- national cooperation. Keywords confiscation – money laundering – asset recovery – organised crime – civil forfeiture 1 Professor for Criminal Law at the University of A Coruña, Spain, and Marie Curie fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Germany.