An office is being set up to improve the tracing of assets frozen on court order in a bid to fight organised crime such as drug trafficking.

The Asset Management Bureau will also be able to locate assets of someone accused of a crime and who would have registered them under someone else’s name.

“This year will be remembered as the year in which we started treating genuine drug victims as people who need help and not as criminals.

“However, we also pledged that 2015 would be the year when we step up our fight against organised crime such as drug trafficking,” Justice Minister Owen Bonnici said yesterday.

Dr Bonnici was speaking to the media about the launch of the office in the coming days after the Cabinet approved of a set of regulations in terms of the Criminal Code. The main aim of the office is tracing and identifying assets. The regulations lay down that, for the purposes of investigating whether someone benefited from the proceeds of a crime or received such assets, information about any trusts they might be connected to has to be given.

The office will also be tasked with better managing the attached or frozen assets during prosecution to ensure the assets’ value does not drop.

Any profit from the assets recovered from people who have committed serious crimes would be passed on to the government and, therefore, it was in the government’s interest that the value of such assets did not deteriorate, the minister added.

Dr Bonnici noted that the setting up of the office followed consultation with the Irish Asset Recovery and Management Bureau.

The board of the new bureau will be made up of people from existing entities such as the police and the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit. It will recruit forensic auditing and accounting experts.The new office will be headed by the Director of Courts.