Extended Confiscation of a Material Benefit in Polish Criminal Law

On 23 March 2017 the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish Parliament) passed the Act on Amending the Criminal Code and Numerous Other Acts23. In the reasons appended to the draft bill it was asserted that the law intended “to introduce into Polish substantive, executive and procedural criminal law amendments with a view to enhancing the effectiveness of mechanisms employed to deprive offenders of the benefits they accrued as a result of committing a crime”. This paper sets out to present a construction of Article 45 of the Polish Criminal Code as amended and to assess the correctness of the amendment, particularly in the context of the Polish Constitution and the Directive 2014/42/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 3 April 2014 on the freezing and confiscation of instrumentalities and proceeds of crime in the European Union.