The progression is very important in one year. The action of the antifraude national office (Unfain) enabled the seizure of more than 596 million euros in criminal assets in France in 2024, the customs services announced on Wednesday. Their total amounted to 159 million in 2023.
The ONAF, created on May 1, 2024 to strengthen the means of the judicial finance inquiry (SEJF), was entrusted 360 new surveys in one year. Last year, they made it possible to dismantle 44 criminal organizations. 39 % of these cases were entrusted to the ONAF “by the courts in charge of the fight against organized crime and the most complex fraud”, as the national financial prosecutor’s office (PNF), the national court to combat organized crime (Junalco) or the national anti -terrorist prosecution.
Money, cars, buildings
The seizures of criminal assets, “a necessity in economic and financial surveys”, “aim to deprive the authors of the direct or indirect product of the offenses committed”, indicates the antifraude office in its annual activity report. Among these seized assets, species and bank accounts, but also cryptocurrencies, gold, “cars and luxury watches”, as well as buildings, details the director of ONAF, Christophe Perruaux, in the introduction of this report. “It is good to say that the crime does not pay. It’s better to show it! He congratulated himself.
The ONAF, made up of 312 investigators divided into 10 units throughout the territory, also “allowed the State to detect in 2024 nearly 20 billion euros in fraud and recover 13 billion”. “ONAF’s action is fully part of the government’s determined will to fight fraud and thus help reduce debt”.
French customs have seen their means be considerably strengthened by the law of July 18, 2023 to combat new threats. It is a question of adapting the legal means to fight effectively against financial offenses.
