Special committee on the Housing Crisis in the European Union Ordinary meeting
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HOUS European Parliament
Follow its sittingsLuděk Niedermayer
Properties remain empty and if rented they are rented very often for pretty high prices. Luxury development flourish while affordable housing became scarce and capital flows don't go where it's needed but where the criminal proceeds can be concealed most effectively. Beyond this market distortion, part of this involves also organized crime, it fuels corruption and very often the the corruption the proceeds are invested into real estate market if no real estate is part of the corruption process. So it undermines the democratic governments. The scale of the problem is probably immense.
As referred to EPRS report issue published in 2019 as well as supranational risk assessment on money laundering issued by European Commission.
They both confirm the magnitude of the problem. We are talking about billions of euro, billions of euro that are laundered. Those reports recall that real estate sector is both highly attractive and particularly vulnerable for criminal abuse. It is attractive because it allows criminals to launder vast amount of the money quickly through various technique. It enable them to enjoy relatively safe assets that sometimes is generating substantial revenues from the renting.
And we also should not forget that very often real estate proceeds are treated very favorably from the tax point of view as the as the benefit. They also benefit from the safe investments to assets that is historically very often increasing increasing the the value. It is vulnerable sectors because there are many ways how to hide the criminal origin of the funds when real estates are purchased.
Cash transactions remain a classic method, but increasingly sophisticated schemes relying on shell companies, different companies, the strawmen to hide the true beneficial owners are used in practice very much. At the same time, the controls carried out by the banks, notaries and real estate professionals may be limited, may be fragmented and insufficient, or limited awareness also play the role. And the result is, as we are see, we see and also the citizens can see that. This is precisely why European Parliament worked hard on the anti-money laundering package in 2024. We have strengthened the control to be applied by intermediaries, both in the financial and non-financial sector, and we reduce the risk posed by cash.
Competent authorities will have access to information on property ownership and prices. We also tackle the issue of the shell companies by making sure that beneficial owners of companies and trusts are registered in the central registries, accessible to competent authorities, intermediaries and those with legitimate interest. Crucially, these obligations apply especially to the companies established in the third countries when they acquire the real estates in EU, because we know that this option is very often used recently.
I hope these measures will lead to improvement, probably will not solve all the issues, but it will get us on the way to improve. So I hope that, so actually I would rather say I wish the discussion will continue because the crime associated with the real estate market is very dangerous and it's linked with other forms of the crime. So it's timely, it's good time to have this discussion and we must continue in our work. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much Luděk for these inspiring words. We now turn to our first panel, as I said is dedicated to the role of EU agencies in combating organized crime in the real estate sector.
And I'm very pleased to welcome the two representatives from Europol and EPPO. Europol plays a central role in supporting Member States' law enforcement authorities in detecting and dismantling criminal networks, including those that exploit the real estate market to launder illicit proceeds. On the other side, EPPO has rapidly established itself as a key factor in prosecuting crimes affecting the EU's financial interests. In this regard, real estate fraud and money laundering are increasingly prominent among the cases that it handles.
So together, their contributions will give us a clearer picture of the scale of the phenomenon, the tools available at the EU level, and the gaps that still need to be addressed. So I now give the floor to Alexander Resch, head of the Financial Crime Unit at the European Financial and Economic Crime Centre at Europol. So Mr. Resch, thank you for joining us, and you have about five, six minutes.
Alexander Resch
Thank you very much, Chair, for having the floor. Thank you very much for having Europol here in the House Committee. I just would like to give a brief overview on how real estate, houses, residential buildings, commercial buildings are misused for criminal activities.
When I say criminal activities, we are speaking about serious organized crime, not about opportunity actors. So the few slides will represent some information on how buildings are misused, although money laundering is of our most concern. Nevertheless, there are some other areas where real estates are misused. So if we just go for the first slide, I won't speak about cocaine. We have huge problems with cocaine.
I would like to speak about synthetic drugs, amphetamine, MDMA. They are produced here in Europe in mid-scale, small-scale laboratories. And these laboratories, they are set up in houses, apartments, residential buildings. So here we have supported an operation in a few countries, including in Poland, where a number of laboratories have been dismantled.
Next slide, please. The same here with more than 20 laboratories dismantled in Central Europe, in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, etc. Also here, this is, these are criminal enterprises and they are acting as such. And they rely on apartments, on commercial premises in order to run their criminal business. Next slide.
We also do see the misuse of apartments, residential buildings for trafficking in human beings, here mainly for the means of labor exploitation, but also sexual exploitation. On the right hand side you will see two pictures where a Nepalese victim, he was working in the gastronomy, has been accommodated under basement, only accessible via toilet room. So sometimes criminals are quite innovative on how to accommodate the people that are working for them, sometimes even without permit or even accommodated in very inhuman, unsanitary or overcrowded buildings.
The same goes for sexual exploitation where we do see persons engaged in prostitution also offering their service in apartments, but only on short term and then they went to the next apartments in the next city. So there is an organization behind renting these apartments, yeah, offering it to the persons engaged in prostitution so that these criminal activities could be conducted. Next slide. The same goes for migrant smuggling.
With the migrant flows, there is also a need to accommodate migrants in certain EU member states prior to the next travel, let's say, or prior to the travel to the next countries. In this case, we have supported an operation in which migrants with the destination of the UK also have been accommodated in quite overcrowded dormitories. And this is one of the pictures that has been taken by the raid when these houses have been raided by the colleagues. Next slide.
We have a huge problem with online fraud and online scams. Here it's not only serious organized crime, this is we have to say that's industrialized, that's a crime that's industrialized. And these people they were working from call centers. I mean the picture you see here that was one of the three call centers we supported Albanian authorities in which you can see call centers at scale where a lot of people are making calls to the victims in different EU member states.
We also do have these call centers in the EU member states, eventually not at scale like this, but still in residential buildings, in apartments where people are placed in order to do the calls to victims, yeah, to offer investments, but at the end it's very often it's just investment fraud, cyber trading fraud, but they also rely on these kind of buildings. Next slide. That's cybercrime as a service here, that was a residential building raided in Latvia. Here cybercriminals have been operating a SIM farm. What is a SIM farm?
They have been operating 40,000 SIM cards all registered with dummy personalities, that means with fake personalities with different telco providers. Once you have SIM cards with different names you can arrange a lot of online fraud and they do it as cybercrime as a service. So they have been running 40,000 SIM cards with SIM boxes just to be used to conduct online fraud and scams and that was a building raided in Latvia. Next slide.
The same goes for counterfeiting. We have a lot of problems with counterfeit medicine, pharmaceuticals, but also counterfeit currencies, and also here commercial buildings, commercial premises, but even apartments, like you can see on the left-hand side, that's a picture taken in Italy, where counterfeit currency was produced at scale with more than 30 high-level printers also placed in an apartment in order to produce millions or to produce counterfeit euro worth millions of euro. Next slide.
We see a lot of problems in the construction sector. Construction sector is quite vulnerable for a number of crimes, especially organized labor fraud. That means here we see workers that are missing legal permits, working permits, or they are running under false self-employment. Just to give an example, you may see people from Venezuela, they have been brought to Portugal, here they register as self-employees, but at the end you will find them on construction sites in Belgium. But they are not self-employed.
They are part of a scheme of a scheme run by organized crime and criminal enterprises.
Here there is, we have a lot of problems in terms of organized labor fraud, employment fraud by various means. Next slide. And then as already mentioned, money laundering. This is our biggest concern in a lot of operations where work has been done by the colleagues, as it is always our ultimate goal to freeze, to seize, to confiscate the assets.
In a lot of the operations when the criminal investigation is reaching the level for the seizure and confiscation of assets, not in all but quite often there are also real estates. If you are able to trace the money flows eventually you will end up on the next slide you will see how it is done. You will end up in real estates that are purchased in touristic areas, in high level areas, in suburban areas. But it's not that they directly buy the real estates. They rely on complex corporate structures on overseas or tax havens where they have registered incorporated companies that act or that are used as a vehicle in order to be used to buy real estates.
So it's not that easy that you just follow the money and see, okay, this criminal has bought a real estate in this city. It's much more complex and we rely on beneficial ownership information of these databases in order to follow the trail and to find out, okay, what has been done with the money that have been put into these companies' corporate structures and where was the money invested? And quite often it's in real estates. Next slide. That's the last slide.
As already mentioned, thanks to the AML package, yes, there are a number of obliged entities or categories like notaries, lawyers, real estate agents. They are obliged entities. That means they have a number of obligations such as customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence, transaction monitoring, but also reporting suspicious transactions. Nevertheless, if we speak with the FIUs and get an idea on how much is reported from these designated non-financial business and professions, eventually much more can be done from this area as still the financial institutions are those reporting the most to the FIUs. I think there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to real estate agents, Maklers, notaries to report suspicious transactions and real estate purchases.
Thank you very much for the moment.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much. That was very, very interesting.
And now I give the floor to Marius Bulancea. Marius Bulancea, Head of Operations at the European Public Prosecutor's Office, who's online, who's joining us online. Thank you so much for joining us. You have the floor.
Marius Bulancea
Good morning. Thank you for the invitation. I speak on behalf of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, which is a EU body that represents the independent prosecution service of the Union for investigating and prosecuting crimes against its budget.
The purpose today is to talk about the intersection between our mandate and the housing policy and what that reveals that may be of interest for the work of the committee. Based on our findings during the five years of operations, we can confidently state that fraud should be seen as a significant driver for many of the current challenges affecting the Union's policies, including those on affordable and sustainable housing. This is not just a marginal nuisance. Protecting the financial interests of the Union, which is the mandate of the EPPO, and protecting the housing of its citizens are from this perspective overlapping tasks.
What we see from our cases is that fraud operates on two fronts when it comes to matters that have an influence on the housing policy. On one hand, criminals fraudulently divert public money, particularly EU money, that were meant to build and to renovate homes. Then on the other hand, as it has been mentioned already, criminals often use the housing market to launder the proceeds of fraud, distorting the prices and the supply that represent these fundamentals. I'll address first the part concerning fraud against EU programs that fund housing.
Most of the EU support for housing flows indirectly through cohesion funds, the European Regional Development Fund, the Social Fund, and now the Recovery and Resilience Facility. And wherever there are such funds, such flows of money, fraud tends to appear, and then our investigations follow. And I will present a few examples, all of them coming from official cases and based on information that was already communicated to the public.
For example, in the Czech Republic, two representatives of a public interest association were indicted and then convicted for having obtained 250,000 euros from the Regional Development Fund in order to convert a building into housing for the elderly. What the investigation demonstrated is that they made false statements about the works that were actually conducted, so the courts convicted them. In another case in Bulgaria, a mayor was arrested over a 169,000 euro grant for energy efficiency in multi-family residential buildings, where officials certified works that actually were never finished. In Italy, two social housing officials and an accountant were accused of having a 1.5 million renovation carried out on paper only and then splitting the profit.
The funding this time came from the Cohesion Fund. And only two weeks ago, on 8 June, the Paris Criminal Court convicted seven people of a 1.13 million euros organized fraud against the French energy renovation scheme, which was co-financed by the EU under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. The court found the defendants guilty of fraud committed by an organized criminal group to unlawfully obtain public funds. This last case may deserve a moment because it speaks directly, I believe, to the work of this committee.
And it demonstrates that a well-intended program without robust controls is highly likely to be affected by fraud. This will not only lose money for the EU, but it will affect public trust as it denies honest households the support they were promised. The French housing agency reported that it blocked over 174 million euros in attempted renovation fraud in 2025 and 2025 alone, and that the MaPrimeRénov' scheme was suspended precisely because fraud had become systemic and it was estimated that approximately 20% of all applications were based on fraudulent documents.
There is no reason to believe this type of systemic problems are limited to a single program or to a single member state. And this raises in turn an important question regarding the ability of the current detection systems to address this threat. Can the systems process the high volumes of relevant data and can they identify and follow up on all suspicions? Then I'll try to move to the second part of the second pattern that we are seeing that affects the housing policy, and that is the transformation of the housing marketing into a laundering machine.
As it has been mentioned, real estate is still the preferred vehicle for laundering the proceeds of EU fraud. And this has indeed a direct link to the housing crisis, which we can see also in our cases. Since real estate is durable, stores value, and there are multiple tools that criminals can use to obscure the identity of the beneficial owner, it has remained a favorite for money laundering schemes, even with the appearance of multiple alternatives.
For example, in one EPPO investigation, a single criminal group that was running a VAT fraud scheme with an estimated 260 million euros in damage, that group owned over 150 properties. All of them were seized by the prosecutor during the investigation. But that was just one single group. Try to multiply this finding by the number of criminal groups that operate under Euro in Europe and which are under investigation in order to have even a rough estimate of the scale of the overall impact.
To put this into context, you must be aware that in 2025 alone the EPPO opened more than 2,000 new investigations, which meant 35 more cases than the year before. And in this investigations judges granted freezing orders worth 1.13 billion euros for assets representing proceeds of crime. What we could see was that a meaningful share of those frozen assets were represented by real estate. And we believe that the mechanism this mechanism of money laundering is highly relevant for the committee, because when criminal money buys housing, as it has been said already, it creates artificial demand, it withdraws units from the market, it pushes prices up and has an immediate impact on affordability.
And also it corrupts the whole environment around it, because it recruits professionals like accountants, lawyers, brokers, who lend the scheme a veneer of legitimacy and who in their turn help distorting the legitimate market. And then I would like to finish my my intervention with three points that are we could see them as conclusions based on our experience and what we see in our cases. And the first one is that fraud-proofing needs to be built into housing policy.
The expenditure funds, and particularly those that are related to the housing policy, for example under recovery and resilience programs, these funds are dispersed fast against tight deadlines, and this speed is exactly what is exploited by fraudsters. Ex-ante controls, identity verification, certification requirements remain essential and should not be seen as simply bureaucratic friction. On top of that, investing in detecting capacity is crucial because analytical tools that can process significant, huge volumes of data and can spot immediately outliers are crucial and they can prevent huge losses if they are deployed wisely.
The second point is that real estate transparency should be seen as essential for any housing policy. Again, this has been mentioned already, but it is very much a conclusion that we support and that is based on our investigations, and namely that beneficial ownership registries, scrutiny of cash and corporate property purchases, and information sharing are tools that will protect both the EU budget but also the housing market. And the third one is a more general conclusion, and that is that relevant data needs to be made available, needs to flow to investigators.
The EPPO can only act if we are informed of a suspicion of a crime, if those who have a responsibility to detect such crimes do so. And what we see is that detection is improving, but still the reporting from public authorities and from public institutions both at EU and national level remain uneven. Similarly, direct access to information via European databases is still a work in progress and there is still significant room for improvement in order to empower prosecutors to act efficiently. That was all for my intervention and I look forward for your questions. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now we open the floor to questions, so I invite the coordinators and representatives of the political group to take the floor for up to two minutes each, and then our experts will reply after every two questions.
So I start by giving the floor to Alicia Homs Ginel.
Alicia Homs Ginel
Sí, muchas gracias, presidenta. Y la verdad que este hearing yo creo que debería haberse realizado antes, porque cuando hemos hablado de criminalidad en el mercado de la vivienda en esta comisión, creo que el debate ha quedado peligrosamente simplificado. Y eso es lo que hemos reflejado en nuestro informe. Y después de esta presentación, creo que deberíamos haber incluido aspectos que son muy peligrosos y que a mí realmente me han dejado los pelos de punta.
Yo creo que, como bien se ha explicado, hay que hacer énfasis en esas redes de fraude inmobiliario, de alquileres ilegales que se utilizan para explotar a personas vulnerables, de estafas digitales que afectan a la gente que con todo su esfuerzo ha ahorrado para obtener una vivienda y que al final le acaban robando ese dinero, que suelen ser gente de clase media o clases más vulnerables. Y esto no es un fenómeno marginal porque al final distorsiona los precios, como bien han dicho, expulsa a residentes y debilita el acceso a la vivienda en las ciudades porque se están utilizando pisos para cometer acciones ilegales.
Por eso a mí me gustaría hacer una pregunta, ¿no? Porque aquí hubo quien insistió mucho en hablar de la simplificación, es un debate que a nivel europeo estamos teniendo mucho, la cuestión de la simplificación, pero estamos viendo que lo que nos están pidiendo es que si ya con esta burocracia que hay hay estafas y las estafas van hacia fondos europeos, ¿qué pasará si aquí hacemos una simplificación que no tenga ningún tipo de control? Yo creo que con la simplificación sí, pero lo que hay que intentar evitar a toda costa es que ocurran este tipo de escenarios que ya con todas las trabas burocráticas que hay ocurren. Así que creo que deberíamos reflexionar todos un poquito cuando hablamos de la simplificación de que no nos roben los recursos y sobre todo que no ataquen a los ciudadanos más vulnerables. Gracias.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Georgiana Teodorescu for ECR.
Georgiana Teodorescu
My question is for EPPO. În lumina recentului raport votat de Parlament privind problema locuirii și totodată în lumina strategiei UE în acest domeniu, vă rog să ne explicați care sunt principalele provocări avute de EPPO în combaterea fenomenului infracțional aferent acestui domeniu, precum și propuneri de lege ferenda pe care le vedeți oportune pentru ca statele membre să poată preveni mai bine această infracționalitate și să asigure totodată accesul real al cetățenilor la o piață a locuințelor ieftine.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now, before giving the floor back to the experts, I would also like to hear on this last question also the opinion of Europol more in general. The kind of initiatives, we know also from, you know, Mr. Niedermayer talked about it earlier, that we have a new package on anti-money laundering.
I would like to ask if this package is considered to have helped or to still need would need some revisions to make it really, you know, house crime proof. I don't know how to say that. So what additional measures, if needed, we would need to take to avoid criminal activities in the real estate sector.
Alexander Resch
If I may, thank you very much. I mean, we do see very good developments given the AML package and the AMLD6. I think it also refers to the enforcement.
As already mentioned, we have a number of categories under the obliged entities, but then it's also to have them, yeah, doing their job and reporting suspicious transactions. So if you go into statistics of national FIUs, you will see how many reports have been made by notaries, real estate agents, and eventually that's something where, yeah, focus should be given. From Europol's side, what we are trying to do, asset tracing and asset recovery is within the Economic Financial Crime Center of our utmost importance. Criminals do not deal with drugs or are engaged with migrant smuggling because they don't do it for fun, they do it for profit.
So we need to go for the profits. That means if the countries have proper resources for financial investigation, asset tracing, asset recovery, we would be much more successful in identifying where the assets are parked, where the money is invested, including all the real estates, in order to confiscate and recover it. From Europol's side, we do it with dedicated sprints where we invite the countries to nominate high-value targets, then we pool resources and we try to identify where did these targets invest their money.
And always we come across real estates where assets have been invested and then of course we try to help in getting these real estates back to the countries and to the governments.
Marius Bulancea
Yes. I will maybe start with the first part of the question from Mr. Odobescu and that had to do with the challenges that we are facing.
And I believe the most of the challenges are linked to the fact that before the EPPO had started its operations, we could see that the level of fraud affecting the EU budget was severely underestimated. What everyone thought is that fraud is somewhat marginal, that it affects a relatively small part of the programs. And our investigations have demonstrated that this is not the case.
So, as I mentioned, we had at the end of 2023, there were about 3,600 investigations ongoing, a 35% increase compared to the previous year. So after five years of operations, we are still seeing increases in the case of the number of investigations of around 30, 40% year to year, which demonstrates that this is a phenomenon that we are now uncovering. What the European Chief Prosecutor states is that we have uncovered a new continent of crime. And that has to do with the housing policy, but also beyond that when it comes to other types of expenditure fraud, revenue fraud, and so on. So that creates a significant set of challenges, internal challenges for the EPPO itself, but also in relation to our stakeholders that are crucial for the efficiency of our investigations.
One of it has to do, and I tried to touch upon it earlier, is the capacity to detect the right levels of fraud. As I said, the detecting and the reporting to the EPPO is extremely uneven compared if we go member state to member state or a national authority compared to the European authorities. We only received last year 140 reports of suspicions of fraud from European institutions, bodies, offices, and agencies. Out of the almost 7,000 that we have received in total, only 140 came from the EU itself. So I believe that the capacity to detect suspicion of fraud is not at the level it should be.
And that also goes for some national authorities in some member states. Then comes the capacity, this discrepancy between the estimation of the level of fraud and the actual volumes that we are seeing brings severe issues when it comes to the resources that are necessary to properly investigate this types of fraud. Both for the EPPO itself, but also again for its stakeholders, those who support the investigations. We are prosecutors.
We rely heavily on the national law enforcement, we rely heavily on the support of EU agencies like Europol. And we see that both our capacity, their capacities are severely limited when it comes, for example, for the ability to process the high volumes of data that we encounter in an investigation. Nowadays, we have investigation where hundreds of terabytes are being seized in just one case. That these are huge volumes of data. And someone needs to go through all this information to find all the relevant info, all the relevant evidence that can prove the guilt, that can prove exculpatory for the suspects.
And this is a process for which the institutions at national and EU level are not fully prepared yet, and more resources would be needed to create the ability to handle this task. In terms of future legal changes, I don't know if we are in the best position. You know, the revision of the EPPO regulation is ongoing. There have been several proposals that were made by the EPPO. We think that could increase its efficiency.
We hope that the legislator will find them useful.
But I do believe that things are moving in the right direction, including with the new AML package. But I believe we need also to be to acknowledge the fact that there is a limit to how much legislative policy can achieve in its own if it isn't accompanied by sufficient resources, by an awareness of the type of the problem that we are facing and the right implementing policies to be put in place. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now I collect the next two questions and we start with Gordan Bosanac for the Greens.
Gordan Bosanac
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation.
It was really, really interesting and actually I feel sorry that we didn't hear this before we were writing report. Because if you remember what we did in a report about criminal investigation, we've been, not we, EPP was focusing on squatters as a main problem of criminality around the housing policy, which I'm actually happy that you even didn't mention because this is really not something that I hope you will not waste your time on investigations around squatters because as we can see there are serious and the really, really big problems related to the criminals in a housing sector. And I'm coming from Croatia. We were recently shocked that by the data provided by the financial authorities that 70 percent of the financial transactions related to the housing market was in cash or in one transaction without the loans.
So this for me was a clear indicator that people are really with a lot of money are actually using the the housing market where to actually put put the money. And as you know, Croatia is very attractive touristic country, so you can imagine that there is a lot of interest that money goes in that direction. But I will actually have a question for you.
You also both of you, you really brilliantly pointed out what is needed to be approved to be improved for your work to be more efficient. But my question also goes to EPPO. If I understood well, you are also still asking for more access to the data information on EU level. So you still cannot reach all the EU databases. Correct me if I'm wrong if I misunderstood you because for me this is shocking.
I really think that all the databases on EU level should be open to you. And the second is what we hear from you, that most of the indicators when the transactions are coming in this sector are coming from the bank sector, which do have legal obligations, but the notaries and lawyers and real estate agencies are not that much motivated. How you can see this sector to make them more motivated to report? Because I really don't see it's in their financial interest to do that. So how to overbridge this fact that every real estate agent wants to have a big transaction, to sell the villas around, and not ask where the money comes from?
So do you also have some ideas how to improve that? Thanks.
Irene Montero
Thank you, chair, I'm going to speak in Spanish.
A mí, muchas gracias por estar aquí, pero a mí me preocupa que sigamos alimentando la idea de que el problema de la vivienda en Europa es la ocupación, es son los migrantes, es la criminalidad. Por ejemplo, en España de la ocupación la derecha nos está hablando todos los días y ¿sabe cuántas consultas recibe la oficina antiocupación en Valencia? 12 consultas en medio año. En Castilla y León, cero consultas en seis meses. En Palma, seis llamadas en seis meses.
0,2 consultas por día, 48 consultas en seis meses.
Le doy solo una comparación con un problema de seguridad que sí es real en nuestras sociedades, el más grave, como es la violencia machista. Solo en los puntos municipales para víctimas de violencia en Madrid se atendió a más de trece mil mujeres y mil trescientos niños y niñas. El cero dieciséis, el teléfono de atención a víctimas de violencia machista recibe una media de trescientas treinta consultas al día, más de cincuenta y nueve mil en seis meses. Y a estos recursos, obviamente, los agitadores de la ocupación le llaman chiringuitos feministas y le quitan la financiación. La cuestión es que, por ejemplo, en España solo uno de cada diez jóvenes se puede ir de casa de sus padres antes de los treinta años.
Porque el precio de la vivienda, pues es impagable.
Y la culpa de estos datos no es ningún ocupa, no es la criminalidad organizada, sino especuladores que están protegidos por las normas y las leyes europeas para seguir haciendo negocio con la vivienda. La gente gasta el 50, el 60, el 70% de su salario en pagar el alquiler. Hay cada vez más familias, familias enteras que están viviendo en una habitación con otra familia en otra habitación porque no se pueden pagar un piso. Y esto por no hablar de que para que te preocupe que te ocupen tu segunda casa, me imagino que saben ustedes lo que tiene que pasar, que es que tengas dos casas o más. Y en España solo hay un 4% de personas que tengan más de dos casas.
Entonces, yo creo de verdad que el problema de la vivienda es la especulación y que eso debería ser el delito. Lo que pasa que como ese delito lo cometen señores con traje y corbata, aquí lo llamamos emprendimiento, tiburones de las finanzas.
Y ese es yo creo el problema que deberíamos estar abordando aquí.
Alexander Resch
Thank you very much. From Europol's side, in order to address the question in terms of the designated non-financial businesses and professions, yes, there is a problem. How to address it? I think awareness needs to be raised and that was already mentioned.
I mean, we have some very good money laundering reporting officers in the real estate sector. With one I talked, he said he's seen cases where foreign investors from Far East, they are buying real estates in city centers and they even do not rent it. They just park the money and these real estates stay empty. So these are really concerning cases. I think awareness needs to be raised by forms of public-private partnerships.
The good thing is we do see a number of public-private partnerships in the area of financial economic crime, that means composed of law enforcement, FIUs, but then also private sector obliged entities, notaries in a number of countries.
I just would like to give an example of the German PPP, the AFCA, the Anti-Financial Crime Alliance. They have established a working group to exactly look into this area, professional enablers, professional facilitators, gatekeepers. And they have produced a typology paper, money laundering in the real estate sector. So I think this is the avenue we need to go. There needs to be awareness raised.
We need this kind of public-private partnerships. We also do it, or we have it on a European level. Europol is hosting a transnational PPP in order to make these obliged entities more aware and to get better in identifying these cases, in reporting these cases, in doing their KYC.
Marius Bulancea
Thank you. I'll try to address the part related to EPPO's access to European databases. Indeed, according to the EPPO regulation, we are entitled to have access to all the European databases for the purposes of the investigation.
Of course, in reality, the implementation of this provision means that there was a distinction that was created by some of the data owners between direct access and indirect access, which is not a legislative distinction, but like I said, there are sometimes differences between the legislative policy and the actual reality. And for several databases that we see as crucial, the database owner has only allowed us indirect access, which means in practice that a request needs to be sent to the database owner, that someone needs to process it, validate, to extract the information that is relevant to us and to send it.
Which is not, we feel, the way things need to work in the 21st century, because speed is of the essence for these types of investigation, and waiting for weeks or sometimes even more in order to get an answer to a request is not, we believe, what the legislator had in mind when including this provision on access to the databases. Because the direct access means that in a compliant way, in a form that is being logged and so on, you can have access directly and you can act immediately upon the information that has been extracted. So that is what I had in mind when I was mentioning about things still needing to be improved. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now I have three requests for the catch-the-eye.
We don't have that much time left, so I will collect these three questions, like one minute each, and then we will give back the floor to the experts. We start with Verena Mertens for EPP.
Verena Mertens
Thank you very much, I would like to speak in German please. Um es kurz zu machen, als Erstes noch mal auch der Hinweis von mir, die Vermögensabschöpfung und Bekämpfung von Geldwäsche ist der wichtigste Schritt auch zur Bekämpfung der organisierten Kriminalität insgesamt, denn das tut ihnen viel mehr weh, als wenn einzelne Bandenmitglieder inhaftiert werden. Meine Frage richtet sich in Richtung Schrottimmobilien. Hat Europol da Erfahrung und Erkenntnisse und vor allem wie machen das die anderen Mitgliedstaaten, denn in Deutschland haben wir mit diesem Phänomen ein großes Problem.
Ich erläutere das kurz. In Deutschland werden Arbeitnehmer aus anderen Mitgliedstaaten, zum Beispiel häufig aus Rumänien, angeworben mit Versprechen viel Geld verdienen zu können. Die werden aber von organisierten Banden im Prinzip nur angeworben, um dort organisierten Sozialleistungsbetrug zu begehen und diese Gelder müssen die dann an die organisierten Banden abgeben.
Die leben in sogenannten Schrottimmobilien, also in heruntergekommenen Häusern, die eben von dieser organisierten Kriminalität günstig angekauft werden und für diese kriminelle diesen kriminellen Modus Operandi genutzt werden. In Deutschland ein großes Problem, hat auch mit dem europäischen Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeitsbegriff zu tun und da mal die Frage, wie sieht das in anderen Mitgliedstaaten aus und was kann Europol hier für Erkenntnisse beitragen? Danke.
Gabriele Bischoff
Thank you very much. Thank you also for the overview.
Indeed, I would like to know a little bit about how much money do we talk about in Europe and that money laundering in real estate. And I think from the labor side, what we can see is that it's organized crime that does this labor exploitation and the construction sector is a high-risk sector here. We have the European Labor Agency, they did a very good study on this. They do a lot of work and joint inspections. And at the same time that these criminal organizations can use the construction sector then for money laundering here.
So my question is on one hand, besides the anti-money laundering package, what can be done? Would also more detailed digital registers on on flats and rents etc. help? For example, we are just starting to decide on that and to do that in my hometown in in Berlin. And the second question I have especially also to the European funds, we are discussing a new governance structure.
You say it's still increasing that you detect fraud with European with European funds. And with the new governance structure of the MFF, could you give some concrete recommendations how to do it? And I was just a bit aware, we are discussing the EU Inc. as a form for any company within 48 hours. You can register a company and in the same time you can deregister it without any notaries or any control. If this is used by the by the this sector here, I would have huge doubts that this opens absolutely new windows for money laundering then.
Irene Tinagli
Yes.
And now I give the floor to Maria Zacharia for the non-inscrits.
Maria Zacharia
Κυρίες και κύριοι. Στην Ελλάδα μετά από χρόνια μνημονίων, εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες κατοικίες βγήκαν σε πλειστηριασμό και πέρασαν σε funds και επενδυτικά σχήματα μέσω του συστήματος Ηρακλής με την εγγύηση του ελληνικού λαού και την έγκριση της Κομισιόν. Ποιοι είναι οι πραγματικοί ιδιοκτήτες αυτών των funds; Ποιοι αγοράζουν μαζικά ακίνητα και από ποιες χώρες; Ποιος ελέγχει την προέλευση των κεφαλαίων, ποιος ελέγχει τις διαδρομές του χρήματος;
Και πώς γίνεται την ώρα που χιλιάδες οικογένειες χάνουν τα σπίτια τους να βλέπουμε πολιτικά πρόσωπα να δηλώνουν δεκάδες ακίνητα, 17 τη μια χρονιά, 51 την αμέσως επόμενη, ενώ η συγκέντρωση περιουσίας αυξάνεται διαρκώς; Η στέγαση έχει μετατραπεί σε χρηματοπιστωτικό προϊόν, σε όχημα αδιαφάνειας και σε ένα τομέα υψηλού κινδύνου για τη νομιμοποίηση εσόδων από εγκληματικές δραστηριότητες, όπως αναγνωρίζουν πλέον και οι ευρωπαϊκές αρχές.
Οι πολίτες ζητούν ένα πράγμα: πλήρη διαφάνεια για τα funds και τους πραγματικούς δικαιούχους τους και όλες τις συναλλαγές στην αγορά ακινήτων. Το ερώτημα είναι απλό: είναι διατεθειμένη η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση να επιβάλει υποχρεωτική πλήρη διαφάνεια για τους πραγματικούς ιδιοκτήτες ακινήτων, funds και εταιρικών σχημάτων και να εξασφαλίσει την πλήρη ιχνηλασιμότητα των διαδρομών του χρήματος σε όλα τα κράτη μέλη ή θα συνεχίσουμε να μιλάμε για το πρόβλημα χωρίς να αγγίζουμε τους μηχανισμούς που το τροφοδοτούν; Σας ευχαριστώ.
Irene Tinagli
So thank you very much. I also had a question on my own, in particular to Mr. Resch, because I know that there has been a study with empirical evidence that money laundering activities directly affect and contribute to rising real estate prices.
So this is very relevant for the work of this committee. This is a study that, if I recall correctly, was based on data on Germany. But I would like you to elaborate a little bit on this study and to see if there are other studies in other countries that are being conducted and how this impact and how it's deploying in Germany and possibly in other places. Thanks.
Alexander Resch
Thank you very much. Being from Germany, yes, I'm aware of the study. It was conducted by the University of Trier. The University of Trier wanted to explore whether there is an effect, an impact on the housing prices in these cities where houses are purchased, bought by criminals in order to launder proceeds.
That was quite interesting. So what did the University of Trier? They have been looking into the statistics of the FIU Germany, looking into how many suspicious transaction reports have been raised by real estate brokers and agencies and notaries for specific cities. And at the same time, they have seen, okay, there have been cities where much more suspicious transactions have been reported. And they have been able to detect a correlation of the volume of suspicious transaction reports that have at least a slight impact on the housing prices.
So eventually the study is not perfect by means of methodology when speaking with one of the experts, but it was the first kind of its study and it is quite interesting because according to the conclusions, yes, there was an impact in those cities where more money obviously has been laundered according to the suspicious transaction reports made.
Eventually you also can see there is also a higher level of pricing in these cities. I would directly go to address one or another question made in terms of Schrottimmobilien. I'm aware of the situation in North Rhine-Westphalia. We do see similar situations in operations we do support mainly in trafficking in human beings, labour exploitation. So we do see let's say workers, especially engaged in gastronomy, catering, construction, cleaning, nail shops etc. sometimes accommodated in inhuman unsanitary situations.
We supported an operation in Hungary. People have been working on a pig farm and they have been accommodated, I do not know how many people in a single room, and the conditions are really inhuman. So to some extent, we do also see this kind of situations in other EU Member States.
To the question how much money we do speak is in the real estate sector, I do not have figures but what I can say, when we did the first sprint of project asset, we have nominated 100 high-level criminals across Europe and all the colleagues from the asset recovery offices joined forces in Europol's headquarters identifying their assets regardless whether in luxury goods, real estates, cars, bank accounts.
After one week of this action, we identified assets worth 60 million of euro, whereas just 50 million of euro by means of real estates. So the huge majority of assets identified by these nominated targets have been invested into real estates. At least we can see it from the operations and sprints we do. To the last question, who is controlling the real estate sector or those obliged entities in the real estate sectors? I can only speak for Germany, being from there.
In Germany, you have 300 plus agencies in charge of controlling the obliged entities, being notaries, real estate markets, because it's not happening on a federal level, it's happening on the regional states. And there you need to go to the so-called Regierungsbezirke, where you have designated persons who have a mandate to control this area. So at least in one or another country, I think there is some kind of need of harmonization, I would say.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. We need to move to the second panel, which actually will give us the opportunity to delve deeper into national member states' practices and so to see... Oh, sorry. Sorry, I apologize. Mr. Bulancea, you want to...
I apologize, I was looking at the clock and we are over time, so I was rushing to the second panel, but please, I give you the floor for a couple of minutes if you want to reply to these questions.
Marius Bulancea
I'll be very brief. As regards the labor exploitation and human trafficking, I'm afraid we don't have much to add because our competence is strictly linked to fraud that is affecting the budget of the EU.
There are big areas of criminality on which we have limited or more anecdotal 67 billion euros. Out of this, as I mentioned, more than 1 billion euros have been identified and seized by the prosecutors of the EPPO. And as my colleague also mentioned, we can see that most of the money that is being laundered, it is done through the housing market. So the impact is big and I'm quite confident that we're talking overall in the order of billions of euros. As regards potential changes in the governance of the MFF, I think from our perspective it's relatively early and I don't know if we are well placed at this moment to make such recommendations.
You need to be aware that always what we perceive, what we see in our investigations, there is a certain delay from the moment when funds are being dispersed, fraud is being committed, and then you have detection and things that are being investigated and then we can spot the patterns and what is behind it. We do see that there is already significant fraud, even if the NextGeneration funds have only started to be dispersed not too long ago. Last year we had more than 500 such investigations, approximately 100 indictments, cases where the court proceedings were ongoing. We could see that most of the areas are being affected, apparently with a strong preference towards the green transition projects. So definitely there is fraud and there are opportunities there as well, but I don't think that we can say now what exactly should be changed in terms of governance.
Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now we move to the next panel. So as I said, this will give us the opportunity to go deeper into the experience of member states and so they will explain how they respond to illegal activities carried out in the real estate sector. So on this respect, I'm pleased to welcome our experts.
They are all connected online and I start by giving the floor to Sonja Schulz, strategic analyst at the German Financial Intelligence Unit from Germany. Mrs. Schulz, you have the floor. You have about five, six minutes.
Sonja Schulz
Thank you very much, dear members of the Special Committee on the Housing Crisis in the European Union, dear audience. Thank you for the opportunity to share view Germany's perspective. I would like to elaborate further on a particular crime in the German real estate sector, namely money laundering. Next slide, please.
Money laundering is a particular interesting case for crime in the real estate sector, as money laundering is an important threat to the functioning of the real estate market. Mr. Resch has just explained in greater detail about the recent research by the University of Trier, which has demonstrated that money laundering has a significant and really causal impact on prices in the real estate sector, potentially because money launderers are willing to pay prices above the market value. For all buyers and interested parties in the real estate sector, this means higher prices for properties. At the same time, real estate is particularly attractive for money laundering because of its security, potential increases in value, and high transaction volumes.
Next slide, please. To hide the illegal origin of money when purchasing property, offenders use different techniques. First is the involvement of straw person and the construction of opaque company ownership structures.
Of course, there can be good reasons for complex structures. Nevertheless, multi-level and nested ownership and control structures that extend across different jurisdictions are a major risk factor, particularly in the case of links to countries that have been classified by the FATF or the European Commission as third countries with high risk. And they may be deliberately set up with the goal to hide the true beneficiary. Money laundering can also be the reason behind underpricing or overpricing. Offenders buy property at a higher price than its market value because having a legitimate source of funds can be more important than making an economically most profitable business.
Nevertheless, also property sales below market value can be indicative of money laundering.
First, it can indicate a hidden transfer of values between collusive parties in the case of underpricing from the seller to the buyer and in the case of overpricing from the buyer to the seller. Also, when buying real estate at a significantly low price, funds might be paid outside the paying contract, possibly also using cash money derived from crimes, so it's just a seemingly low price. There are also known cases in which objects are sold at a significantly different price compared to the previous acquisition after a relatively short period of time.
In legitimate real estate transaction, at least in Germany, a timely resale of real estate is usually avoided due to the associated high costs such as notary fees and taxes. Additionally, money launderers might use extensive renovations and refurbishments to integrate additional money from crimes and further increase the value of the property, potentially paying construction companies with cash money. In this case, money laundering also mingles with other crimes such as undeclared work or labor exploitation. Next slide please. Germany has taken a couple of countermeasures to fight money laundering in the real estate sector over the last couple of years.
First is that real estate agents have long been obliged to report suspicious property transactions to the German Financial Intelligence Units, and so are lawyers and notaries who are involved in transactions. Lawyers and notaries are a particularly interesting group in this respect, as they act in the tension field between money laundering prevention on the one hand side and their adherence to professional confidentiality obligations on the other hand side. The German Geldwäschegesetz-Meldepflichtverordnung-Immobilien therefore specifies standardized circumstances for these professional groups which always require the submission of a suspicious action report.
And this shifts the reporting obligation from a risk-based approach to a standardized rule-based approach with minimum discretion for these groups. And this has very substantially increased the number of suspicious action reports by these groups in Germany. Among the circumstances which always require a suspicious action report are the previously mentioned typologies such as difficulties in identifying the true beneficial owner, a substantial deviation of sales prices compared to the market value and a timely resale with significant price changes without plausible reason.
In order to fight money laundering with opaque company ownership structures, Germany has established the transparency register. It serves to record the beneficial owners of all German legal entities under private law, and also foreign country associations must immediately notify the German transparency register about their beneficial owner if they hold or if they are about to acquire German domestic property. And finally, since April 1st, 2023, cash payments for property purchases have been prohibited in Germany, and this makes the integration of cash money derived from crimes into the legal economy more difficult than before. Final slide, please.
With this, I would like to close and thank you very much for your kind attention. I'm looking forward to your questions and the further discussion.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Alessandro Lembo, Lieutenant Colonel at Guardia di Finanza from Italy. Mr. Lembo.
Alessandro Lembo
Madam Chair, honorable members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen.
First of all, I would like to thank the Chair and the members of the special committee on the housing crisis for their invitation and for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion. When analyzing the relationship between organized crime and the real estate market, it is useful to start from a simple consideration. Under normal circumstances, investors assess the price of a property, the risk associated with the investment, and the expected return.
Organized criminal groups, and more generally those seeking to reintroduce illicit proceeds into the legal economy, often operate according to different considerations. When the primary objective is to conceal the origin of accumulated wealth, the price of a property may become a secondary factor compared with the need to give an appearance of legitimacy to resources being invested.
Those who are not constrained by ordinary market dynamics may therefore contribute to distorting price formation and competitive conditions, ultimately affecting the proper functioning of real estate markets. For this reason, from the perspective of the Italian Guardia di Finanza as a specialized economic and financial law enforcement agency, the real estate sector continues to be one of the areas most exposed to criminal infiltration and, at the same time, a privileged observatory for investigative activities, where indicators of the concealment and reinvestment of illicit proceeds frequently emerge.
In this context following the money remains the most effective method for identifying investment and assets linked to criminal activity. From this perspective investigator must be focused on the origin of the resources employed on identifying the individuals behind investments and on the financial financial flows that support them. Particularly attention should be paid to cases in which high value real estate investment are formally registered in the name of individuals whose economic capacity is not consistent with the transaction concern.
In such circumstances, reconstructing the relationship between the individuals involved and the related financial flow makes it possible to verify the actual origin of the resources employed and the true beneficial ownership of the investment. The integration of information obtained from tax, financial, corporate, land registry, and investigative sources often makes it possible to identify connections that, if viewed in isolation, would not reveal the full extent of the phenomenon.
In this context, the increasingly transnational nature of criminal activities makes international cooperation an essential component of investigative work. It is not uncommon for individuals, company asset and financial flow linked to the same criminal network to be spread across several countries. For the Guardia di Finanza, the ability to reconstruct such connection and to identify assets located abroad in a timely manner is often decisive for the effectiveness of investigative action.
Establishing the existence of an illicit investment, however, is only the first step. The real challenge lies in the permanent criminal organization of the assets they have accumulated and preventing those resources from being reinvested in the legal economy. For criminal organizations, wealth is not merely a source of profit, but also an instrument of power and influence.
The freezing, seizure, and confiscation of illicit assets make it possible to undermine the economic strength of criminal organizations and limit their ability to influence the proper functioning of markets. From this perspective, combating criminal infiltration in the real estate sector is important not only from a security standpoint, but also from an economic and social perspective. Preserving the integrity of the real estate market requires the ability to identify, trace, and deprive criminal organizations of the resources that enable them to infiltrate the legal economy. Ensuring that the real estate sector operates according to the rules of the legal economy, rather than the interests of organized crime, remains a key objective of investigative and asset recovery activities.
Thank you for your kind attention. I'm at your disposal for any question. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Grazie, grazie mille per questa interessante presentazione. Now I give the floor to Alexandru-Nicușor Constantin, head of the Financial Investigation Coordination Service from Romania. Mr. Constantin, thank you for joining us, you have the floor.
Speaker 25
I will have my presentation in Romanian, but the slides are in English for you to get along. So, prezentarea mea are două componente principale.
Alexandru-Nicușor Constantin
În prima parte a prezentării voi încerca să prezint atribuțiile noastre principale din perspectiva investigării infracțiunilor care au legătură cu fenomenul imobiliar, iar în partea a doua voi încerca să vă prezint trei cazuri relevante care au aptitudinea în opinia noastră să deformeze sau să creeze o anumită inflexiune în piața imobiliară. Next slide.
Structura din care fac parte, respectiv Direcția de Investigare a Criminalității Economice, face parte din poliția judiciară și din Inspectoratul General al Poliției, iar printre atribuțiile noastre principale se află investigarea criminalității în domeniul financiar și fiscal, pe de o parte, iar pe de altă parte, de a identifica și de a efectua investigații financiare prin care încercăm să recuperăm produsul infracțional din sfera noastră de competență. Next slide. Aceasta este o structură generică a instituției noastre.
Eu conduc departamentul de investigații financiare, care din punctul nostru de vedere este relevant sau poate cel mai important moment al anchetei penale, respectiv concentrarea pe recuperarea prejudiciilor din săvârșirea de infracțiuni. Next slide. Acestea sunt principalele tipuri de sau modalități prin care noi suntem fie sesizați, fie ne sesizăm din oficiu cu privire la infracțiuni din sfera economică și bineînțeles și din sectorul imobiliar. În România observăm o constantă practică în plângerea ale persoanelor care sunt înșelate prin diverse manopere cu privire la achiziția unor imobile sau în general în sectorul imobiliar.
O altă modalitate prin care suntem sesizați sunt rapoartele de informații financiare care ne sunt furnizate de Unitatea de Informații Financiare din România și care, ulterior confirmărilor, sunt analizate de noi și ne sesizăm din oficiu cu privire la acele fapte. De asemenea, avem dreptul de a ne sesiza din oficiu atunci când aflăm despre fraude sau alte infracțiuni săvârșite în domeniul imobiliar din alte căi.
Și bineînțeles ultima modalitate mai puțin întâlnită sunt denunțurile cu privire la săvârșirea unei infracțiuni din domeniul imobiliar. Next slide. Acestea sunt principalele infracțiuni pe care noi le întâlnim în practica noastră cu privire la infracțiuni din domeniul imobiliar. Bineînțeles s-a discutat mult și de către antevorbitorii mei și noi întâlnim foarte des spălări ale banilor în acest domeniu.
De asemenea întâlnim foarte multe infracțiuni de evaziune fiscală care au ca obiect sectorul imobiliar. Fraude pe care le întâlnim destul de des și înșelăciuni în special în privința persoanelor fizice care sunt înșelate. Falsurile sunt la fel infracțiuni foarte des întâlnite în acest domeniu și alte infracțiuni asociate respectiv delapidări, bancrute frauduloase și alte asemenea infracțiuni care sunt asociate cu infracțiunile principale. Next slide. Acestea sunt principalele metode pe care noi le-am întâlnit atunci când vorbim de infracțiunile din domeniul imobiliar prin care infractorii încearcă fie să înșele oamenii fie statul dacă vorbim de spălarea banilor sau infracțiuni de evaziune fiscală.
În primul rând fenomenul societăților fantomă este foarte des întâlnit. De asemenea și bineînțeles scopul lor este să nu poată fi urmărite sau persoanele care sunt administratori să nu poată fi identificate sau urmărite. Desigur avem dubla sau multipla vânzare a aceluiași imobil. Am avut o întreagă practică în ultimii ani cu privire la această situație. Construcții care nu sunt intabulate sau care nu respectă autorizațiile sau nu au autorizații de construcție ceea ce produc prejudicii pentru viitorii cumpărători care nu știu acest lucru.
Clauze abuzive și tot felul de vicii ascunse care duc în final la păcălirea sau înșelarea clienților.
O spălare a banilor prin reciclarea sumelor provenite din alte infracțiuni în domeniul imobiliar și, bineînțeles, delapidarea acestor sume care provin din infracțiunile din sectorul imobiliar de către persoanele care sunt interesate. Principalele metode prin care noi reușim să investigăm aceste infracțiuni au în primul rând legătură cu o cooperare națională puternică cu toate celelalte instituții care fie ne pot furniza informații inițiale, fie ne pot furniza informații ulterioare pentru a identifica infractorii și, bineînțeles, modalitățile de săvârșire. Un partener foarte important sunt organele fiscale, dar și Oficiul Național de Prevenire și Spălare a Banilor, care ne furnizează informații financiare relevante, mai ales la începutul investigației.
De asemenea, realizăm cooperare internațională cu multiple instituții, atât din Europa cât și din afară: Europol, Eurojust, Interpol, OLAF și bineînțeles ANABI prin rețeaua CARIN. Next slide. Am extras câteva detalii relevante din punctul meu de vedere pentru dumneavoastră din activitatea Oficiului Național pentru Prevenirea și Combaterea Spălării Banilor, Unitatea de Informații Financiare din România. Conform datelor publicate datelor celor mai recente publicate de ei, aproximativ 7,2% din PIB-ul României are de-a face cu tranzacții imobiliare.
De asemenea, ei au identificat peste 8.900 de agenții imobiliare și dezvoltatori în 2024 și de asemenea au identificat că riscul de spălare a banilor în domeniul imobiliar este foarte ridicat. Aici ca o completare la ce spunea și domnul Reș și ce s-a vorbit și anterior, Oficiul realizează studii anuale cu privire la sectorul imobiliar și cu privire la modalitățile prin care se realizează spălarea banilor în domeniul imobiliar și ei au arătat în mod constant că este un risc foarte ridicat în acest domeniu și de asemenea că prețurile sunt distorsionate prin aceste practici. Next slide.
Irene Tinagli
We need to close because otherwise we don't have time for the questions.
Alexandru-Nicușor Constantin
Okay, yeah, sure. Next slide. Aici o să vă prezint trei cazuri practice care din punctul nostru de vedere au distorsionat mult piața imobiliară. Desigur, nu sunt singurele, sunt cele mai recente.
Fac mențiunea că niciunul dintre aceste cazuri nu sunt judecate definitiv, persoanele avute în vedere beneficiază de prezumția de nevinovăție, dar sunt cazuri de notorietate și care au provocat inclusiv schimbări legislative. O putem observa, de exemplu, în cazul Nordis, că prejudiciul rezultat în urma înșelării persoanelor de bună credință care au cumpărat apartamente care ulterior nu le-au fost livrate este aproximativ de 195 de milioane de euro și avem peste 850 de persoane înșelate într-un singur caz.
Acestor persoane li se promiteau imobile care ulterior nu le erau vândute, iar un imobil era vândut de mai multe ori prin diverse modalități, astfel încât notarii și persoanele respective să nu-și dea seama că același imobil fusese anterior vândut. După cum puteți vedea, alt caz am avut un prejudiciu de 11,5 milioane de euro, 251 de victime între anii 2019-2023, tot la fel cu persoane înșelate al căror imobile n-au mai fost niciodată achiziționate. Vă mulțumesc mult, vă aștept cu întrebări.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Now I collect the first two questions. We start with Mrs. Nerina Martens for EPP.
Speaker 26
Yes. I was just wondering how well you work together with the new agency we have, the AMLA, against money laundering.
Gabriele Bischoff
For me, the question is to what extent do you cooperate between the different national anti-fraud and money laundering organizations within Europe, especially as we can see that these crimes are often have a strong transnational component, either by the owners or if we look at criminal networks operating in different member states.
Irene Tinagli
Yes, so I would start again from Mrs. Schulz and then we can hear from the others.
Sonja Schulz
I think I can report that the collaboration with AMLA works very well. For example, we have a FIU delegate who is working there and specifically for the sake of increasing cooperation and communication. And also FIU Germany takes part in different workstreams which are dedicated to work on different topics.
For example, one recently established is the one on the guidelines on suspicious indicators which are required to be published next year according to the AML regulation 69. Yes, and with respect to the question to the international cooperation, we cooperate with different FIUs and also with other European agencies, for example, Europol and others. And we also have public-private partnerships which are not restricted to the domestic national level, but also, for example, the European Financial Institutes Public-Private Partnership, there we participate as well.
Speaker 28
Assolutamente, non c'è nessun problema. Abbiamo tutti i traduttori, nessun problema.
Alessandro Lembo
Thank you very much. Come dicevo nel corso dell'intervento, ormai è impossibile pensare a una criminalità relegata ai confini nazionali. Anzi, l'obiettivo principe delle organizzazioni criminali ovviamente è delocalizzare ricchezze in territorio estero, al fine di rendere sempre più complicata e complessa ovviamente la ricostruzione della provenienza illecita dei fondi utilizzati.
Quindi per noi, diciamo come amministrazione, come Guardia di Finanza, la cooperazione internazionale è un qualcosa di quotidiano. Cooperiamo, collaboriamo grazie al supporto, all'ottimo supporto che ci viene fornito dall'agenzia Europol, dall'agenzia, da Interpol. Noi cooperiamo quotidianamente con tutti i partner europei ed esteri. E a questo voglio aggiungere anche la nostra rete di esperti. Noi abbiamo degli esperti delocalizzati nelle sedi, diciamo in giro per il mondo, nelle sedi delle ambasciate.
Quindi assolutamente sì, la cooperazione per noi è un tassello fondamentale per l'attività investigativa. Il crimine organizzato va affrontato a 360 gradi da un punto di vista militare, ma soprattutto da un punto di vista patrimoniale, perché privare la criminalità organizzata delle fonti di sostentamento è il tassello necessario per debellarla, per cercare, provare a destrutturarla. Spero di aver risposto alla domanda.
Alexandru-Nicușor Constantin
So I'll speak Romanian as well.
Vă mulțumesc pentru întrebare. Da, așa cum am încercat să prezint și mai devreme, avem o colaborare foarte bună cu Unitatea de Informații Financiare din România, prin intermediul căreia colaborăm și cu alte unități de informații financiare din alte state europene sau din afara Europei. Nu avem o colaborare directă cu AMLA, dar prin intermediul oficiului putem primi informații și de la ei.
Desigur, avem o colaborare instituțională foarte bună cu Europolul, cu Interpolul și cu rețeaua CARIN, care este gestionată de instituția noastră națională ANABI. Din perspectiva organizației mele, ceea ce interesează prin colaborare este, bineînțeles, să identificăm persoanele care au săvârșit infracțiuni, dar mai mult decât atât, să identificăm și produsul infracțiunii. România pune din ce în ce mai mult accent în ultimul timp și organizația mea încearcă în fiecare zi să ne îmbunătățim metodele astfel încât să și recuperăm produsul infracțiunii, pentru că nu este suficient doar să identificăm infractorii, este suficient să le și confiscăm banii, pentru că asta îi arde cel mai tare. Da, vă mulțumesc.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now I'll take the next two questions and I give the floor to Giordana Teodorescu for the ECR.
Georgiana Teodorescu
Thank you, chair. I will speak in Romanian and my question is addressed only to the expert speaking from Romanian authorities.
Având în vedere cazuistica instituției pe care o reprezentați și totodată bunele practici ale României în materia combaterii infracționalității aferente domeniului locuirii, vă rugăm să ne indicați câteva exemple specifice de legislație națională prin care România reușește să prevină și să combată eficient această infracționalitate. Altfel spus, ce ar putea să învețe celelalte state membre de la România pentru a combate eficient această criminalitate și pentru a facilita accesul cetățenilor la o piață ieftină a locuințelor? Mulțumesc.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Gordan Bosanac for the Greens.
Gordan Bosanac
For me it was very interesting to hear and make more aware how actually the money laundry can contribute to the increase of the housing prices because everyone who is doing this dirty business can offer 10% more than anyone else, so that makes sense. And second was we also hear before that usually people who are investing, I mean through the money laundry, are sometimes buying the properties just to keep them empty. And this is what we also recognized before, the problem of empty stocks. So apparently the significant part of empty stock could then be related to the criminal background, which is bad news. But my question is, do we see this pattern only in a luxury property business or across the property?
Thank you.
Gordan Bosanac
So are those money laundry people are usually focused on luxury properties or can you see the traces all around the real estate business? Thank you.
Sonja Schulz
Thank you very much for this interesting question.
At the moment, there can be different motives to keep property empty, for example, to also increase prices in the regional area if you hold lots of properties. Also, it can just be to wait to legitimize a resale, say that the offender is not so much interested in the property really itself and to keep this property and to rent it out or live in this property, but it's just to buy it, keep it empty, keep it for some time, maybe increase its value by renovations, but that does not have to be the case, and then resell it to get a legitimate source of funds.
And that if that is the main interest, getting a legitimate source of fund due to a resale of the property, this may be just the case and that may be the case in any country because this type of money laundering is of course an international phenomenon.
Alessandro Lembo
E sì, per quello che è il nostro punto di vista come Guardia di Finanza, diciamo non abbiamo incontrato spesso casi di case, chiedo scusa il gioco di parole, vuote, nel senso che immaginiamo qualsiasi organizzazione criminale come un'impresa.
Quindi, diciamo ogni impresa punta a una sola cosa, a massimizzare il profitto, in questo caso il profitto illecito. Quindi incontriamo casi di acquisto massivo di case, di complessi immobiliari, di strutture alberghiere, ma diciamo uso investimento. Quindi strutture che vengono utilizzate o, come diceva la collega, ristrutturate e rivendute. Quindi diciamo casi non patrimonio immobilizzato in senso lato non è un'esperienza italiana, ecco.
Irene Tinagli
E mi scusi, Mr. Lembo, ma sull'altra parte della domanda riguardo all'incidenza dell'attività criminale più nel segmento di lusso oppure se lo si nota anche in altri segmenti del mercato, voi avete qualche informazione, qualche dato specifico o non abbastanza?
Alessandro Lembo
Assolutamente sì, chiedo scusa, mi ero perso l'altra parte della domanda. Diciamo che il riciclaggio dei proventi illeciti interessa un po' tutti i settori.
Quello di lusso ovviamente è quello preferito, però diciamo è quello maggiormente esposto all'attenzione investigativa. Quindi sì, incontriamo casi. Abbiamo, a titolo meramente informativo, nell'ultimo anno abbiamo svolto quasi 20.000 accertamenti patrimoniali e proposto all'autorità giudiziaria sequestri per oltre 5 miliardi di euro. E i patrimoni individuati erano riconducibili alle diverse più ampie categorie imprenditoriali. Settore di lusso sicuramente, strutture alberghiere, residence, ma anche attività commerciali, normali attività commerciali.
Ristorazione, per esempio, è un altro settore interessato dalla criminalità organizzata e il settore ovviamente immobiliare che è il focus, l'oggetto di oggi.
Ristorazione, per esempio, è un altro settore interessato dalla criminalità organizzata.
Alexandru-Nicușor Constantin
Vă mulțumesc. În legătură cu întrebarea doamnei Teodorescu privitor la bune practici legislative, să le numim așa, pe care România le-a adoptat în ultima perioadă, putem distinge între două tipuri de legislații.
Pe de o parte, legislația care privește direct activitatea de urmărire penală și a identificării produsului infracțional. Aici avem două tipuri de confiscări pe care organele de urmărire penală și instanțele de judecată le au la dispoziție pentru, respectiv confiscarea specială și confiscarea extinsă.
Confiscarea extinsă urmărește să confiște produsul infracțional chiar dacă infracțiunea nu este dovedită sau nu se cunoaște cu exactitate de unde provine, însă atunci când există o discrepanță foarte mare între veniturile licite ale persoanei și proprietățile sau activele pe care aceasta le are, organele de urmărire penală pot institui sechestre și instanța de judecată poate dispune această confiscare. De asemenea, așa cum vă precizam ca urmare a cazului Nordis, care a avut un impact social, dar și bineînțeles în piața imobiliară destul de important, legiuitorul nostru a venit și a adoptat o lege prin care aceste practici nu mai pot fi realizate, respectiv dubla sau multipla vânzare a aceluiași imobil către mai multe persoane care astfel sunt prejudiciate, bineînțeles.
În prezent, orice promisiune de vânzare-cumpărare trebuie realizată doar după ce acea construcție este preîntabulată, se face o preîntabulare inițială a construcției. De asemenea, se face o compartimentare a construcției, astfel încât să rezulte cu claritate numărul de imobile și cum sunt dispuse și, de asemenea, se creează un cont escrow la dispoziția constructorului care poate fi folosit strict pentru construcția imobilului respectiv.
Observasem în practică că acești constructori primeau avansuri de la cetățeni care își doreau să cumpere un imobil, însă ulterior nu mai realizau construcția, bineînțeles îi delapidau sau îi foloseau în alte scopuri. În prezent acest lucru a fost limitat prin această legislație.
Și desigur o altă procedură care a început să ia să prindă din ce în ce mai mult grip în România este o procedură fiscală care este gestionată de organele fiscale și care poate confisca până la 70% din venitul celui care nu poate dovedi prin surse licite că l-a putut procura. Asta este o exemplu de practică legislativă mai nouă în România. În ceea ce privește cea de-a doua întrebare cu privire la tipul de imobile care sunt folosite de infractori, noi observăm în practică sau sunt achiziționate de infractori, observăm în practică atât achiziții de imobile de lux, dar și imobile obișnuite.
Observăm deseori cum infractorii cumpără blocuri întregi de locuințe, inclusiv de locuințe mici, garsoniere și așa mai departe, doar pentru a-și externaliza produsul infracțional. Deci este o tendință clară a lor atât de a integra produsul infracțional în imobile de orice tip, dar și, bineînțeles, de a spăla produsul infracțional prin tranzacții imobiliare de orice tip. Vă mulțumesc.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much. I have no further questions for the guest speakers of this second panel, so let me really thank you for your availability, for sharing with us your experience.
This is indeed very, very useful for us also to help us better understand the scale of the challenge, but also the determination with which national authorities are working on it.
So now we move to the third panel, which addresses one of the topics that has already emerged in the second panel, which is the confiscation of seized assets and how they can be reused. So I'm very pleased to have with us two important experts, Mrs. Rosanna Bellantoni, manager of the National Office for Seized and Confiscated Movable and Immovable Property from Italy, and Elena Graniceru, General Director of the National Agency for the Management of Seized Assets. I think this is a really important aspect.
We've learned also in the previous panel how the depth and the dimension of seized assets, which covers billions of euros. So it is also very important to address this topic both as a way to deprive criminal organization from resources and source of means of affecting the market, but on the other hand, also how to return these assets to society in a form that addresses social needs, including housing. So I think this could be have a double purposes. So some Member States have already developed legislative frameworks and practical models in this area, allowing confiscated properties to be repurposed for social housing, community services, or public infrastructure.
So we are very interested in learning more about these experiences and I start by giving the floor to Mrs. Rossana Bellantoni.
Rossana Bellantoni
Good morning. Good morning to the committee. Thank you for the invitation and for the floor. I sent a PowerPoint to help my... Okay, thank you.
Thank you. In the next few minutes, I would like to share Italy's experience, in particular that of National Agency for the Administration and Destination of Assets Seized and Confiscated from Organized Crime.
The next slide, please. The next slide, yes. Okay. I would like to start with a key point. The agency mission cannot be understood in purely administrative or financial terms.
Its deep purpose lies in transforming assets that once expressed criminal power into public resources capable of generating social, institutional, cultural, and economic value for communities.
The allocation of confiscated assets is therefore far more than the final step of a legal procedure. It's the moment that the state's action becomes visible, tangible, and recognizable to citizens. Here lies one of the most distinctive features of the Italian model. Confiscation is not considered the destination, but the beginning of a new phase in which the assets must be administered, developed, and allocated in a manner consistent with the public interest.
Slide, the next slide, please. The agency acts the link between the judicial phase of assets seizure and administrative phase of managing and allocating the assets. In practice, we oversee the transition from the moment the asset is removed from criminal control and the moment it can be effectively used for the public and social purposes. Our work operates on two levels. Administration and maintenance of the assets, often in presence of relevant structural deficiencies and serious planning irregularities.
Allocation, with the retention within the state's assets for institutional needs, transfer to local authorities, or direct allocation to the third sector organization through open tender procedures.
The next slide, please. This model is fully consistent with the Directive EU 2024/1260, which does not merely promote the use of confiscated assets, merely emphasizes the value of confiscation, but also focuses on how assets be managed to prevent them from losing value. The next slide, please. The next. Thank you.
In recent years, we've seen a growing convergence between policies to combat the mafia and housing and social policies. The projects we manage are increasingly focused on supporting vulnerable groups, young people, families in difficulty, the elderly, people with disabilities, the homeless and people with addiction, and supporting housing policies in a context of significant regional inequalities, no longer just along the north-south axis, but also between central and peripheral areas and between towns and cities of different sizes.
The next slide, please. An analysis of projects completed by 31 December 2025 shows a significant prevalence of repurposing for housing and accommodation purposes compared with other institutional or social purposes. Among the most significant examples, you can see housing for emergency accommodation, facilities for people with disabilities, the elderly, victims of domestic violence and people living in extreme poverty, family homes, shelters, etc., projects rooted in local communities.
Alongside this specific attention is paid to service accommodation for the police and fire service, as the permanent presence of these personnel carries a strong symbolic and practical significance, as a presence upholding legality and security, particularly in areas with a high concentration of organized crime. This approach is also in line with the European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2027 on the housing crisis, which calls for a strengthening of public, cooperative, and non-profit housing models and close cooperation between the public sector and the private social sector. The next slide, please.
To ensure the effective social and residential reuse of assets, we have worked on a comprehensive engineering of the allocation process. The main tools are expression of interest to the State Property Agency and local authorities, inter-agency meetings, conference service for a joint and rapid assessment of possible uses, and calls for proposals for the third sector, which promote projects in the social, health, employment, cultural, security, and legal spheres. And then the platform Unified of Destination, PUD.
The next slide, please. The platform Unified of Destination, which makes the entire process transparent and accessible, reduces processing times and enables all stakeholders, both institutional and the third sector, to find out about available assets and submit expression of interest projects. Today, thousands of organizations are registered on the platform, you can see, and almost all authorities, all regions and hundreds of non-profit organizations. The next slide, please. Once an asset is eligible for allocation, final confiscation confirmed, creditor verification complete, it is published on the platform for 60 days and all registered bodies receive an automatic notification.
If valid requests are received from institutional bodies, the agency board initiates the formal allocation procedure. When multiple expressions of interest are received, institutional bodies take precedence. If no request is received after the first 60-days window, the asset is republished for a further 60 days. If still unallocated, a service conference is convened for institutional bodies. When only third-sector interest has been expressed, such proposals are held as reservations pending the outcome of the service conference.
If institutional interest is ultimately absent, the third sector is invited to submit a full project proposal within 30 days in the POT.
The next slide, please. Along permanent use, we have also developed a temporary use to address housing and accommodation emergency. The next, please. I recall in particular, the next, please.
In particular, the Afghan, the space to start again project, launched in 2020 during COVID-19 pandemic to rapidly provide accommodation and space suitable for social distancing and self-isolation and provision to accommodate Afghan nationals in 2021. In 2022, another protocol to reception from Ukraine in collaboration with the Ministry of Interior. In this chart, we can see the trend and the territorial distribution of finalized housing purposes, residential use and various housing components. The next slide, please. The next.
The social use of confiscated assets is one of the most effective and symbolically powerful tools in the fight against organized crime. It transforms illicitly accumulated assets into welfare infrastructure, innovative housing policies, and the restoration of the rule of law and social cohesion. The next, please.
The experience in the NBC demonstrates that when the work of institutions, local authorities and the third sector is successfully combined, confiscated assets not only retain their value but become a driving force for inclusive and sustainable development, strengthening community resilience against mafia infiltration. And the next please. So our work, our job at the time marked by housing crisis, new form of poverty and significant regional inequalities, confiscated assets represent a strategic resource upon which to build long-term public policies in line with European guidelines and citizens' expectations with financial instruments to manage these assets. Thank you for your attention.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. Now I give the floor to Elena Grăniceru, General Director of the National Agency for the Management of Seized Assets from Romania.
Elena Grăniceru
Good morning everyone. My name is Elena Grăniceru and I am the General Director of the National Agency for the Management of Seized Assets. It is a pleasure to be here today to present Romania's experience regarding the identification, management and social reuse of criminal assets through the work of ANABI.
At ANABI, we strongly believe that confiscation should not be seen only as a legal measure against criminals, but also a way to generate a real social benefit. In other words, crime should not pay, society should benefit. I would like to begin with a brief introduction about who we are. The first slide, please. ANABI was established in 2015 under the Ministry of Justice as a part of Romanian efforts to strengthen asset recovery and align with the European standards.
Our mission is to ensure efficient recovery, management, transparency and social reuse of criminal assets. We are both an asset recovery office and also asset management office.
Next slide, please. We have a dual mandate. As an asset recovery office, we are responsible for tracing, identifying, and exchanging information regarding criminal assets, both nationally and internationally, before and after conviction. As asset management office, we take custody of seized assets and manage them during criminal proceedings. As an asset recovery office, we also cooperate with more than 170 jurisdictions through networks such as EU ARO platform, CARIN, and other regional asset recovery networks.
Recently, this cooperation has expanded even further. We are what we call a one-stop shop because our activities cover the entire chain: tracing assets, managing seized properties, organizing auctions, supporting asset sharing, developing public and social reuse mechanism and contributing to crime prevention policies. Now I would like to focus on the main topic of my presentation, which is social reuse. Why is social reuse important? Because it transforms criminal profits into public value.
Instead of allowing confiscated assets to remain unused, we try to convert them into something...
Irene Tinagli
Ms. Graniceru, I'm sorry, if you can slow down a little bit because your presentation is being translated.
Elena Grăniceru
Okay, sorry, sorry. Thank you. I will start again. Why is social reuse important? Because it transforms criminal profits into public value.
Instead of allowing confiscated assets to remain unused, we try to convert them into something that benefits communities directly. Social reuse supports victims, vulnerable groups and local communities, while also increasing public trust in the justice system.
It creates also what we call visible justice. People can actually see that criminal assets are not simply disappearing into bureaucracy, but are being transformed into schools, care centers, shelters, or other public services. At the same time, social reuse encourages cooperation between different sectors, like justice institutions, social services, local authorities, and NGOs. Next slide, please. In Romania, we have two forms of social reuse: the first one is confiscated real estate, and the second one, the National Crime Prevention Support Mechanism.
Next slide, please. Regarding the social reuse of immovable property, confiscated property, the process follows several steps. First, the property is confiscated through a final court decision and becomes part of the private property of the state. Second, ANABI evaluates whether the property has potential for social reuse, taking into account factors such as location, conditions, and community needs.
Then, proposals are submitted to the Ministry of Finance, which prepares the legal framework for transfer. Finally, properties can be transferred free of charge to local authorities or given for use to NGOs and public institutions for projects serving the public interest. I can share with you some best practices in Romania, concrete examples from Romania. For instance, in Bucharest, an immovable property, a confiscated office building, was transferred to the Ministry of Justice and is currently used for judicial administration.
In Bacău County, a confiscated property was transferred into an elderly care facility. In Râmnicu Vâlcea, another property was converted into a kindergarten. In Șelimbăr commune, a land confiscated from criminal activity is currently being considered for future community and social facilities. Next slide, please. One important step for us was the establishment in 2022 of the National Crime Prevention Support Mechanism.
This mechanism is financed through 50% of confiscated money proceeds from asset sales and equivalent value confiscation. It supports legal education, crime prevention, victim assistance, and institutional capacity. The funding is distributed among several institutions, including the Ministry of Health and Education. Next slide, please, sorry, the next slide. The funding is distributed among several institutions, including the Ministry of Health and Education, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor Office, the Ministry of Justice, and ANABI.
Importantly, ANABI uses part of these funds to provide grants for NGOs working in the social field.
For example, the next slide please. Funded projects include legal and psychological assistance for victims with intellectual disabilities, educational programs for children and young people, and crime prevention initiatives targeting vulnerable communities.
One important step was made also in 2022 when the law for victims was amended. It was created a mechanism with vouchers for urgent needs of the victims, for medication, for accommodation, for food and other activities like this. And the vouchers is in the limit of five gross salaries, national salaries, and can be deducted from the compensation for the victims. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very, very much. This is very interesting.
Now we open the floor to questions and I give the floor to Gordan Bosanac for the Greens.
Gordan Bosanac
Thank you, but just a short question to clarify. It was really interesting to see this reuse and repurposing for the social benefits. So for both cases, Italy and Romania, what percentage of the asset actually ends then into the social reuse and what goes on public tenders and some other models? And also how is the ownership then settled?
Does the state also transfer the ownership to the local government or to NGOs, or it's a different model, or it's a mix of models? Thank you.
Rossana Bellantoni
The most part of the destination is to local authorities for the municipalities to develop projects for reuse in many fields. The third sector is involved recently because the novel of the law is in 2017 and the first tender is in 2020.
The local authorities develop usually various model of reuse for institutional also issues and also for allocative reuse for elderly, for young people, for people in extreme poverty.
Elena Grăniceru
Please give me the permission to speak in Romanian, if it's possible.
Elena Grăniceru
Thank you.
Legislația din România permite două tipuri de reutilizare: reutilizarea publică și reutilizarea socială. În ceea ce privește reutilizarea socială, ca și beneficiari, un bun confiscat care ajunge în domeniul privat al statului este transferat în domeniul privat al unui UAT, al unei unități administrativ-teritoriale, iar la propunerea agenției se poate iniția o hotărâre de guvern pentru a putea fi reutilizat de către acest UAT. De asemenea, există și posibilitatea reutilizării publice.
Instituțiile publice pot solicita în baza unei cereri motivate pentru a putea fi folosite ca și sediu. V-am dat un exemplu în scurta mea prezentare. Ministerul Justiției folosește ca și sediu pentru activitățile proprii o clădire întreagă de birouri care a fost confiscată. De asemenea, e important de menționat că deși în această direcție România a făcut pași importanți și a confirmat această direcție deja adoptată în materia reutilizării sociale și publice, sunt încă pași mici pentru că există și provocări ca în orice domeniu. Provocări de ordin juridic, administrativ, dar și operațional și instituțional.
Vorbim aici de litigii sau sarcini care pot întârzia transferul bunurilor, de durata ridicată a procedurilor de confiscare, dar și de alte situații juridice complexe ale bunurilor. De asemenea, de ordin administrativ aș putea să menționez o capacitate administrativă redusă la nivel local, o lipsă a resurselor pentru adaptarea imobilelor la utilizarea socială și poate și o experiență limitată în gestionarea bunurilor confiscate. Ce putem să facem noi în acest domeniu și ce consider eu că ar putea fi îmbunătățit? Aș zice că este vorba de crearea unor mecanisme și a unor instrumente prin care să monitorizăm acest impact social.
Nu putem vorbi de consolidarea cadrului legislativ pentru că există și toate recomandările directivei privind confiscarea sunt implementate prin mecanismele pe care le avem la dispoziție conform legii 318. Dar cred că putem vorbi de o îmbunătățire a vizibilității în acest domeniu.
Ca să răspund la întrebare pe concret, cazurile de reutilizare sunt puține raportat la imobilele confiscate, dar s-a deschis un drum în acest sens. Pentru noi sunt experiențe foarte importante și nu numai cu partea de reutilizare a bunurilor imobile, cât și cu crearea acestui mecanism național de susținere a prevenirii criminalității, pentru că fondurile confiscate sunt direcționate către proiecte care vizează prevenirea criminalității, educație juridică și susținerea victimelor.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much. I have a quick question myself, because in particular to Mrs. Bellantoni, but of course Mrs. Graniceiru is welcome to intervene if she wants to add something in the reply. First, I would like to understand what is the timing of this whole process, because it seems a long process from the moment, first of all, I suppose it will take time to seize the assets and then a long process before these assets are being reused, because it's made in many steps.
Can you give us an idea of the timing and of how it could be made more efficient? The second, I would like to understand how much, you know, in terms of share of percentage, two things: how much of the seized assets could be or are really usable for residential housing, residential purposes, and how are, how many of those are destined to residential purposes?
Or because one thing is the social use, which could be we use it for sports activities of a neighborhood, for the young people, for, you know, something like this. And another thing is we convert these assets in housing, in a permanent type of housing solutions for the vulnerables, for fragile, for workers, for students. Are there examples of this kind? Could there be examples or, you know, projects that go in this direction? What are the obstacles?
Because, for example, what I wonder, where are the resources for this? Because, for example, to convert to residential purposes, to housing, that requires a lot of money, a lot of resources.
Where does this money come from? How can local authorities get the money and the resources to convert these seized assets into complex projects like residential ones, for example, which are more complex than others?
And the last thing, the Italian government has just approved a housing plan that was voted yesterday in the Parliament. I was wondering if you there is if you've been involved at least in the consultation phase and if you think that this plan could leverage the enormous amount of seized assets that we are talking about and convert them into social housing, which was, you know, supposedly one of the purposes of this plan. So, thank you very much.
Questions.
Rossana Bellantoni
You can reply in Italian if you prefer. Preferisce in italiano, cioè per me lo stesso. Allora, per quanto riguarda i tempi, for the time. The timeline is not briefly.
If you want to know the time when confiscated assets we can manage or the time that we use for destination. Because we can, we could allocate the assets only when the asset is definitely confiscated, when all the grade of the level of judiciary phase is complete.
Then we can manage. Before we can allocate these assets, we have to verify that there is no creditor of good faith that could be paid for their credit. So we have to conclude this phase and at the end of this phase we can allocate in the mechanism with the mechanism I explained before, the PUD platform unified. So on all in informatics way, so all bodies as registered we collocate our assets in this platform.
In this platform, the body registered bodies expression their interest and then after the time I show before, the assets is assigned. The assets confiscated are mostly and often with the serious critical situation: vandalism, planning non-compliance, irregularities, insanability.
So there is very many types of difficult and critical situation about the assets confiscated. We don't have the money to resolve this criticalness. We have the instruments, the tools.
So we can ask to the municipality, to the local authorities, to verify the possibility to an sanatorial of these assets and without cost for the state. But for the repurpose of these assets, we haven't money.
We manage and these assets preventing the possibility of dangerous, but we don't refurbishment this. There are, however, instruments, financial instruments by EU, by regional fund that the local authorities can use to refurbishment these assets.
This is the second. The third is the main, let's say, a very find how many assets we allocated for housing provides. In the chart I explain in during my brief intervention, I present the period and the typical destination for housing provide.
And in the time between 2020 and 2027, 2027, we allocated 908 assets to housing needs, both of military and service, fire service allocation, and both to the utilization, the use of local authorities for emergency.
In the recently, we allocate quite 100 assets to the municipality of Palermo for the crisis of allocation people. Before I said something about the critical situation of the assets. The assets are not often, the assets are concentrated in some local areas.
You can see that in Sicily we have one municipality of 500 inhabitants that has over 350 assets confiscated. So the situation is very different from some areas and different areas.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you, thank you very much. Now, non so se vuole rispondere all'ultima cosa che avevo chiesto, se lei vede spazi all'interno del nuovo piano casa del governo italiano appena approvato, modalità in cui gli asset confiscati possano essere e fare parte di questo progetto e poter essere utilizzati o riconvertiti ad uso residenziale per housing sociale o edilizia popolare, se siete stati consultati su come agevolare questi meccanismi prima della scrittura del decreto, oppure se questi sono strumenti che non è un tipo di strumento di intervento che non è adatto al tema di cui stiamo parlando.
Rossana Bellantoni
The national agency maybe she was involved in this.
I personally don't know if it's when other situation or emergency was emerged, the agency was involved also for student, for the house of student. But the elements, the needs of the Ministry of the Universities is not, we cannot respond positively because how can I explain before, the concentration of our assets is not combined with this typical needs.
For other needs we we gave our availability but in that case we don't we don't find something useful for the needs.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you very much.
Before closing, I would like to know if Mrs. Granicero wants to add something, also considering the latest questions that I made, because I was also inspired by your comment on the difficulties in getting resources and funds, because of course converting these assets into real residential projects takes a lot of capacity, resources, and everything. So, thanks.
Elena Grăniceru
Da, mulțumesc pentru întrebare. La fel ca și în Italia, în România putem vorbi de reutilizare doar după rămânerea definitivă a unei hotărâri judecătorești prin care s-a dispus confiscarea asupra unui imobil.
Din acel moment instanțele judecătorești transmit hotărârea judecătorească spre executare organelor fiscale care au obligația să evalueze acel bun. Odată cu evaluarea acelui bun, este transmis către agenție, aceste informații sunt transmise către agenție care publică, care le publică la o secțiune dedicată imobile reutilizate public și social de pe site-ul instituției pentru a avea vizibilitate și acces toți beneficiarii la aceste informații.
În termen de 40 de zile, care este un termen de recomandare, acești beneficiari pot să transmită cereri motivate către instituția noastră și să-și fundamenteze prin raportare la anumite criterii această nevoie, urmând ca în cele 45 de zile lucrătoare de la primirea comunicării privind valoarea de la ANAF, noi să formulăm o propunere, dacă este cazul, către Ministerul de Finanțe pentru a iniția o hotărâre de guvern. Recent am formulat o propunere, încă nu a fost adoptată hotărârea de guvern, am propus o locuință pentru a fi utilizată de către persoane cu dizabilități. Autoritățile din România nu pot face la acest moment investiții în imobilele confiscate.
Odată cu transpunerea directivei, cumva vom avea obligația de a administra aceste bunuri imobile și a le conserva. La acest moment, organele fiscale nu fac partea aceasta de administrare, ei se ocupă doar de partea de valorificare.
Aș dori să mai menționez că dacă bunul nu se reutilizează și nu există cereri sau cererile nu sunt foarte bine fundamentate, se transmit înapoi informația către ANAF care are obligația de a organiza licitațiile publice pentru valorificarea imobilului.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you. Thank you very much, very interesting. Actually, before closing I give the floor to the representative of the European Commission for a feedback, Marije Kusters.
Marije Kusters
Thank you very much. I represent DG HOME and I work in the organized crime team. Indeed, criminals, they use every opportunity at their disposal.
They are extremely powerful, business-like organizations and unfortunately, the housing market is no exception here. To strengthen the response against security threats, we adopted the Protect You strategy in 2025. And there are three main principles that I'd like to stress here. First, to mainstream security considerations in all EU policies. So this housing committee is an excellent example of that.
Secondly, to significantly scale up our capacities and our resources. And today is a very important day since the Commission is going to adopt the revised mandate of Europol and Eurojust today, which is a significant scale-up of their capacity to support Member States.
And thirdly, to tackle security threats, we need to work together in a whole-of-society approach. So this involves not just member states, but also other national authorities at local level, the private sector, citizens, anyone who has a responsibility can and should support, can and should support. To tackle these issues, we also need to look behind the crimes at the powerful networks who control these operations.
And therefore, we are planning in the beginning of 2027 to present a proposal on modernized rules to combat organized crime. This goes into the heart of participation into a criminal organization with revised definitions and penalties and strengthened intelligence and prevention and administrative approach where administrative authorities have their role to play in the fight against organized crime and use the tools that are already at their disposal to work together with law enforcement. Of course, indeed, mentioned a lot, the new Asset Recovery and Confiscation Directive, which was adopted in 2024, represents a major step forward in asset recovery and confiscation.
It strengthens the role of asset recovery offices by granting them broader and more streamlined access to data. It stresses the importance of launching financial investigations in parallel and without delay and stresses the importance of the confiscation of unexplained wealth. But indeed, it also goes further and it introduces the important principle of social reuse of confiscated property. In areas where organized crime seeks to weaken the state, visible social reuse sends a powerful message that it's the state and not criminals that shapes the future of the community.
And therefore national and local authorities should indeed work closely with civil society to achieve the common objective, also by providing additional funding where necessary to support the transformation and repurposing of confiscated assets. A whole-of-society approach is indeed also very important in the fight against money laundering, not only among financial investigators and law enforcement authorities, but also with the private sector. So we strongly as Commission support the work carried out by Europol Financial Intelligence Public Private Partnership as the key EU-level platform fostering structured cooperation. And building on the work of this partnership, Article 75 of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive provides the legal certainty needed to fully unlock the operational potential of public-private partnerships in asset recovery.
So a lot of work to do on many fronts. Thank you.
Irene Tinagli
Thank you, Mrs. Kuster, thank you very much. Now we can conclude our public hearing. I think it was very interesting also to go deeper into a topic that is often neglected, but that has a very relevant impact on our economies and also, as we found out today, on the real estate market and the housing crisis. So thank you very much. We will resume the committee meeting in the afternoon.
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