The challenges of executing penal financial convictions in Iran

Penal procedure is a long process starts from crime discovery and ends to penal verdict execution. The result of such process can be observed in final step of penal procedure, that is, penal verdict execution. Convictions mentioned in penal verdict in Iranian legal system are too diverse so they can be initially divided into financial and nonfinancial convictions. The present research is applied in terms of purpose and content analysis method. In the organization of research, the documentary and library methods have been used and the information analysis has been obtained qualitatively and based on the inference of the researcher on the sources and texts. The execution of penal financial convictions including cash fine, property restitution, crime – related loss, blood money, expropriation and destroying the assets are encountering with a series of radical challenges. Iranian Penal Procedure Law (2013, amended in 2015) and law on How to Execute Financial Convictions (2015) have resolved some relevant problems while some issues such as abusing the payment of financial convictions in instalments, the possibility of abusing in proving insolvency by the attestation of two witness, transferring the burden of proving losing party’s affordability to winning party are still remained. In this vein, some conflicts between legal provisions, transferring procedure previous problems to penal verdicts execution, lack of an independent and strong structure and machinery to execute penal verdicts are, inter alia, the most important challenges for executing penal financial convictions in Iran.