BAMIN representatives from Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina took part in the final conference of the EU-funded Project “Payback”, held in Brussels on 11th of July, during which the results of the project were presented.
Project “PAYBACK” has developed an innovative ICT tool, known as PAYBACK Data Management System which aims at improving the daily management of seized and provisionally confiscated assets and has been tested as a prototype in selected Member States.
PAYBACK DMS focuses on three areas of interest in asset management:
- knowing the exact location of seized assets, distinguishing between a) in-door location (typically for movable assets stored in deposits) and b) map location;
- knowing changes in the economic value of seized assets, via 1) automatically generated outputs representing depreciation/appreciation/stability over time and b) alerts to selected recipients;
- knowing seized assets’ conditions by gathering and storing pictures, videos and any other relevant document, uploaded at different times, to know the exact conditions of a given asset at any time.
The conclusions from the conference were:
- A working prototype of the PAYBACK DMS has been developed and is ready for operational use. Having such a tool would be useful to any country in asset management.
- The key challenges for countries in the management of seized and provisionally confiscated assets is the problem of gathering good quality input data.
- Countries can benefit greatly by PAYBACK DMS in short and long term as it serves to orient pre-seizure planning, choice of storing solutions, asset management actions, asset disposal, accountability and assessment of performance issues.
- Last, PAYBACK DMS provides an objective standard, backed in real time by thousands of records, to asset management decisions.
