Confiscation of criminal proceeds in drug trafficking: requirement of actual dispositional power over profits

The German Federal Court of Criminal Justice (BGH) rejected the defendant's appeal as largely unfounded, upholding the lower court's conviction, but modified the order for the confiscation of criminal proceeds to 231,000 €, removing the additional 33,600 € assessed for a March 2018 trafficking offense where the defendant lacked actual control over the proceeds. The dispute centered on a criminal prosecution for drug trafficking, where the defendant challenged the scope of the confiscation order against the value of criminal profits. The decisive legal basis was the requirement that confiscation applies only to value over which the offender had actual dispositional power (*tatsächliche Verfügungsgewalt*), preventing the inclusion of proceeds for which this element was not met.