Australian Law Confiscates “Unexplained Wealth”
                                    
Michael Duffy
The Sydney Morning Herald
September 27, 2010

Memo to criminals and everyone else: keep those receipts. Last week the state’s “unexplained wealth” law came into effect, to the outrage of civil libertarians and the horror of crooks and their accountants.

Until now the state could confiscate your assets only if it could prove they had been obtained criminally.

This led to horse-trading as authorities demanded a certain amount of assets and crooks agreed to hand over a proportion if there was no further action.

But now the onus of proof has been reversed and cops will be pouncing on real estate, cash, flash cars and bikes, jewellery, spa baths and anything else that catches their eye.

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Once again the government shows us that they regard us all as potential criminals and that you are now considered guilty until proven innocent in this country. This is one of the most tyrannical moves our government's made for years. They can now seize your assets if they consider it "unexplained wealth"? Like I've always said, they are control freaks. They can't sleep easy unless they know about every single transaction or interaction that individuals have engaged in. It's completely nuts.

... wrote on Sep 28^th, 2010 at 2:07pm:


I don't know, after all it works quite well in Miami......if the courts here have the balls to do it the same way......I can see it being a good idea...

Ok, the case you quoted with the guy who had 10 plants is a little silly, but the concept is valid...

All they've really done is shifted the onus of proof from the state to the defendant...
After all, criminals aren't going to keep receipts saying things like.."received $200,000 from drug sales"...so it'd be almost impossible for the police/courts to PROVE the assets came from illegal activity..

This way, since legally aquired assets do leave a paper trail, it shouldn't be hard to prove where the assets came from....

And ALSO in the police state of WA, there are laws in place whereby they can seize property used in the commission of a crime.
This led to a case (which i can't find a link to any more) where a bloke who owned a trucking yard stabbed a guy who was burgling the place.  The state then moved to seize his business as the stabbing occurred on the property, thus fitting the loose definition as being 'used in the commission of a crime'. 

Another case, which I have a little less sympathy for, was a paedophile who had his house seized becasue he molested the kids on the site.  This of course meant his wife and kids (he didn't molest his own kids) lost their home.  I'm sure there must be something in the constitution that prohibits people being punished twice for the same offence, and also the only cap on the amount they can be penalised by this mechanism is the value of their assets.