Members of Dougan’s family, including his mother, who gave evidence in the hearing, and his brother shouted insults at the judge as they left court.
As he was taken down to resume his sentence, Dougan said: “I have lost everything, my family, my kids and now you have taken my house.”Ahahahahahaha!
*rummages in hard drive*
Ah. There you go!
The house was not a proceeds of crime, so the law is being abused here. We should all find this a worrying precedent. The point of the law was to seize assets gained by crime, not inherited from granny.
ReplyDeleteAgree and disagree with Longrider.
ReplyDeleteHe was found to have illegally obtained 200 odd grand through drug dealing and ordered to surrender the cash to the Crown. He's spent it, so the Crown moves against his assets.
He can avoid the loss of the house by returning his ill-gotten gains within 3 months.
Otherwise he and others will just have to ensure that they spend their loot before they're nicked to escape financial penalty.
Seems reasonable, but the integrity of such a system is dependent upon the men and women in authority being trustworthy (they're not) and only using such powers against drug dealing scum, not against license fee dodgers and the like, or people who pay the poll tax late. Which they will, given a quarter of a chance.
If they want to punish some financial criminals, they could take a look around Canary Wharf, or 11 Downing Street.
but the integrity of such a system is dependent upon the men and women in authority being trustworthy (they're not) and only using such powers against drug dealing scum, not against license fee dodgers and the like, or people who pay the poll tax late.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's your problem, right there. This is pernicious law designed to exact vengeance rather than justice.
I always look at this kind of stuff from the perspective of the wrongly convicted as this gives me a sense of its proportion. This is a nasty piece of law. That the target is equally nasty in this instance doesn't make it right. Sooner or later the scum of the state will go for the low-hanging fruit you list above.
Confiscating the value of a house in Middlesbrough? That's 200 quid off the 56K.
ReplyDeletePenseivat
"We should all find this a worrying precedent. "
ReplyDeleteOnly if we're planning to sell drugs, surely?
"Otherwise he and others will just have to ensure that they spend their loot before they're nicked to escape financial penalty."
And if you've nicked as much as Basil, that might prove problematic!
"Confiscating the value of a house in Middlesbrough? That's 200 quid off the 56K."
SNORK!