Asset Recovery Team

When you hear the name Asset Recovery Team, you can’t help but be happy. Sounds like a good thing, right? You would think that if your nice expensive car ever gets stolen, the Asset Recovery Team will be the unit to quickly recover and return your car to you. But like we say here in St. Maarten, nothing ‘t’all go so!

The Asset Recovery Team Sint Maarten, or ART SXM as the Prosecutor’s Office press release so nicely describes it, has a more sinister objective. The ART is the one to take your car away from you if you cannot prove how you came to own such a nice expensive car in the first place. Especially if you do not have a job or any visible means of income. The ART will then assume you did not get the money to buy such a car through legitimate means.

When the ART sells your car after confiscating it, half of the proceeds from the sale will go to the Ministry of Finance – that is, directly into the government’s coffers – and the other half will go into the Crime Fund, to be spent on meaningful projects. In other words, if the Tax Man doesn’t get you, the ART will.