FLASH NEWS
"Toyota Auris"/ When an international case ends without territory, without evidence and without responsibility
2025-12-14 00:17:31 / AKTUALITET
The decision of the Court of First Instance in Brussels to declare itself incompetent in the case known as the “Toyota Auris” marks more than a procedural development. It directly exposes the limits of international criminal investigations, the shortcomings in building money laundering files, and the risk that cases with a high public impact end without any clear criminal liability.
The case concerns the seizure at the port of Durrës of 3,366,700 euros and 80,000 Swiss francs, hidden in two Toyota Auris vehicles coming from Belgium. For years, this file was perceived as evidence of international cooperation against money laundering. However, the decision of the Belgian Court shows that, in essence, the investigation failed to prove the most fundamental element: the place and time of the commission of the criminal offense.
Criminal jurisdiction is not based on assumptions, but on concrete territorial connections. This is where the Belgian investigation fails. The court finds that there is no evidence that the money was hidden on Belgian territory, while the evidence in the file leaves open the possibility that this may have happened in another European country. The unclear route of the vehicles and the stops in several countries reinforce this factual uncertainty.
Equally significant is the way in which the Court overturns the elements on which the Belgian prosecution relied. The purchase and sale of vehicles in Belgium, treated as a connecting link in the criminal activity, is considered a neutral act, in the absence of evidence of criminal intent. Even the allegations of falsification of documents result in no legal effect in Belgian territory, further weakening the architecture of the accusation.
In this context, the fact that the Belgian Prosecution Service itself admits the lack of sufficient evidence for persons resident in Belgium is a clear indication that the file has not reached the minimum level for a sustainable criminal trial. Practically, one of the main international leads in the “Toyota Auris” case is closed without result.
But the consequences of this decision go beyond the borders of a single state. The Toyota Auris case becomes a case study in the failure of international coordination, where evidence, jurisdiction and competence are not built coherently. It highlights a structural problem: when criminal responsibility is distributed across several states, there is a real risk that it will not materialize anywhere.
However, the "Toyota Auris" file produced its own victims in Albania; four people prosecuted for corruption and illegal influence in 2024 and for a period of seven years it was fodder for the Albanian and Belgian political arena.
In the end, the file that was promoted as a symbol of the fight against money laundering and as a challenge to Albania's integration into the European Union, ends up as a counterexample: a fragmented investigation, without clear territory, without evidence and without individualized criminal responsibility. For public opinion, this is a strong bellwether that the fight against organized crime is not measured by amounts seized or media headlines, but by the quality of the investigation and the legal sustainability of the arguments based on evidence.
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