U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. June 6, 2020. Five Legal Challenges Confronting the New DOJ KleptoCapture Initiative
Cases arising from the last klepto initiative and the hundreds of forfeiture cases around the country have contributed to settled precedent that will be front and center when targets of the new KleptoCapture Task Force will inevitably start challenging its seizures in court. This article discusses the potential legal hurdles that lie ahead for the DOJ.
March 18, 2022 at 10:00 AM
7 minute read
On March 2, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the KleptoCapture Task Force, an initiative targeting Russian oligarchs and others who have enabled Vladimir Putin's rise to and grip on power. Although the Task Force will go beyond simply seizing oligarchs' assets—it will, for example, also focus on attempts to evade sanctions through cryptocurrency—the headline of the initiative will be to use civil and criminal forfeiture to seize assets of sanctioned individuals.
Forming a team to go after tainted assets is not a novel concept. The last similar program, the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, was announced in 2010 in a speech by then-Attorney General Eric Holder. Like this latest iteration, it was led by veteran DOJ prosecutors working with law enforcement partners. Its mission was different: to seize proceeds of corruption committed by foreign officials. The highest profile case led by that team is, coincidentally, playing out right now in a federal courthouse in Brooklyn, in the 1MDB trial.
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