Yemeni gov't sees assets recovery from ex-regime

The Yemeni government is preparing legal grounds to recover assets of the Yemeni people which were "stolen" by the former regime, the justice minister said Tuesday. Morshed Ali Al-Arshani, at a news conference on sidelines of the Arab Forum on Asset Recovery, said despite immunity to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, granted in line with the GCC initiative, civil legal pursuit was possible. He said Yemen was an exception among Arab Spring countries because its ordeal ended via the GCC initiative and its executive mechanism. "However we are preparing mechanisms, legal and institutional ideas to seize the opportunity to recover assets." The major objective is to recover the assets "that were stolem over the past three decades," he said. Al-Arshani, meanwhile, said the Arab Forum on Asset Recovery was an added value to trace and freeze assets in order to recover them.