Confiscation and frozen assets in Monaco: life without Protocol No. 1

Because Monaco never ratified Protocol No. 1, a confiscation or asset freeze cannot reach Strasbourg as a property complaint. The question is whether the way the measure was imposed, challenged or reviewed breached another Convention guarantee.

A frozen bank account. A confiscated apartment. Assets seized during a criminal investigation and never released, even years later. For anyone caught up in these measures in Monaco, the natural first question is: what does the European Convention on Human Rights do to protect my property? The honest answer is more complicated than in most of Europe.

In most Council of Europe states, confiscation, seizures and frozen accounts can be examined under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, which protects the peaceful enjoyment of possessions. Monaco is different.

Monaco has not ratified Protocol No. 1

Although Monaco signed Protocol No. 1, it has never ratified it — so Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 cannot be invoked against the Principality. The European Court confirmed this expressly in Michaux v. Monaco (dec.), nos. 36965/22 and 20769/23, 18 January 2024: the complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 was inadmissible because Monaco had not ratified that Protocol.

This matters most in cases involving confiscation, seizures, frozen bank accounts, or other measures affecting substantial assets. But it does not mean such measures automatically fall outside the Convention altogether.

The absence of a property right does not end the Convention analysis

A pure property complaint cannot simply be relabelled under another Convention provision to work around Monaco's non-ratification of Protocol No. 1. The same measure, however, may independently raise other human-rights issues:

• Article 6 § 1 may become relevant where the person concerned could not effectively challenge the measure, where important defence arguments went unexamined, where equality of arms was affected, or where the domestic decision was insufficiently reasoned.
• Article 6 § 2 — the presumption of innocence — may apply where confiscation is based on alleged criminal conduct for which the person has not been convicted.
• Article 7 may apply where confiscation operates as a criminal penalty and questions arise over legality, foreseeability, or retroactive punishment.
• Article 8 may be engaged where the measure connects to searches of homes or professional premises, correspondence, computers, mobile telephones, or other private information — the subject of our companion article on digital searches and legal privilege.

Depending on the circumstances, issues may also arise under Article 13, Article 14, or the guarantees in Protocol No. 7, which Monaco has ratified. The relevant question is not simply whether property was affected, but whether the way the measure was imposed, challenged, or reviewed gives rise to an independent Convention violation.

These issues must not be overlooked domestically

This distinction matters most when a case reaches the Cour de révision. Where confiscation, seizure, or asset freezing genuinely raises questions of fair trial, defence rights, the presumption of innocence, the legality of punishment, privacy, or effective judicial scrutiny, the substance of those complaints should be placed before the Monegasque courts while they can still address them — for the same reasons of exhaustion and admissibility discussed in our article on why Monaco cases can fail in Strasbourg.

This does not mean invoking Convention provisions artificially or indiscriminately — it means identifying the actual human-rights issue behind the measure. A potentially significant Strasbourg complaint can be lost if the domestic proceedings deal exclusively with questions of Monegasque law while the underlying Convention grievance is never sufficiently raised. The absence of Protocol No. 1 makes identifying other possible Convention violations particularly important.

Confiscation before the Cour de révision

A judgment of the Cour de révision of 24 July 2025 illustrates the type of questions that can arise. The proceedings concerned convictions for fraud, forgery, and money laundering, followed by confiscation of bank assets and real estate. Before the Cour de révision, the appellants challenged the legal basis and reasoning for the confiscation, including how the proceeds of the offences were determined, how certain confiscated bank assets were identified, and the origin and confiscability of the property concerned. The Cour de révision rejected the challenges and upheld the confiscation.

This does not establish that every confiscation of this kind complies with — or violates — the Convention. But it does show why the European analysis cannot stop at whether Monegasque law formally authorised the measure. Separate questions may still arise concerning the fairness of the proceedings, the examination of defence arguments, the reasoning of the courts, and the legal character of the confiscation itself.

Frozen bank accounts before Strasbourg

The issue is not theoretical. In Stewart v. Monaco and three other applications, nos. 5221/24, 27765/24, 27966/24 and 29969/24, the European Court is examining proceedings involving the freezing of bank accounts in criminal investigations into alleged money laundering and related offences. As third parties to the criminal proceedings, the applicants could not obtain the documents on which the freezing orders were based. The cases were communicated to the Monegasque Government on 7 October 2025: the Court asked the parties whether Article 6 § 1 applies at all to the proceedings for release of the frozen accounts and, if so, whether the refusal to disclose those documents breached the adversarial principle and equality of arms. No decision or judgment has yet been delivered.

They nevertheless illustrate an important point: the unavailability of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 does not automatically remove proceedings concerning frozen assets from Strasbourg's scrutiny. Where the procedure surrounding the measure independently raises an issue under another Convention right, that issue can still fall within the Court's jurisdiction — provided that the guarantee relied on actually applies, which in Stewart is itself one of the questions put to the parties.

The questions that matter

In a Monaco confiscation or asset-freezing case, the relevant Convention questions may include:

• Was there an effective possibility to challenge the measure?
• Were the principal defence arguments actually examined?
• Was the domestic decision sufficiently reasoned?
• Was the connection between the assets and the alleged offence sufficiently established?
• If confiscation operated as a criminal penalty, was its legal basis sufficiently clear and foreseeable?
• Was the presumption of innocence respected?
• Did searches or digital seizures interfere with rights protected by Article 8?

These questions are distinct from a conventional property complaint under Protocol No. 1. Not every confiscation, seizure, or freezing order belongs before the European Court of Human Rights — but Monaco's non-ratification of Protocol No. 1 does not place asset measures automatically beyond European scrutiny. The decisive question is whether the facts and domestic proceedings disclose an independent violation of a Convention right that Monaco has undertaken to respect.

Finding the right angle

Because Protocol No. 1 is off the table, building a Convention case around a Monaco confiscation or asset freeze is often a matter of identifying which other guarantee was genuinely engaged — and proving it early, before the domestic courts. This individualised assessment is where Just Rights Europe focuses its work: examining each case, following a final decision of the Cour de révision or, where applicable, the Tribunal Suprême, to determine whether it discloses an arguable Convention violation and meets the conditions for an application to Strasbourg.