Economic And Financial Crime In Europe

La criminalité économique et financière s'est largement répandue dans la plupart des pays européens. Cette étude concerne plus particulièrement les Pays-Bas, l'Autriche, la Grèce, l'Allemagne, la Suisse, la Belgique, l'Espagne et la France. Les auteurs y proposent les définitions de la criminalité économique et tentent avec prudence d'en mesurer la prévalence, en examinant les aspects vus du côté des victimes et les réponses institutionnelles qui lui sont apportées.

In the past few years, criminal justice systems have faced important global challenges in the field of economic and financial crime. The 2008 financial crisis revealed how strongly financial markets and economies are interconnected and illustrated that misconduct in the economic and financial sectors is often of a systemic nature, with wide-spread consequences for a large number of victims. The prevention, control and punishment of such crimes is thus confronted with a strong globalisation. Moreover, continuous technological evolutions and socio-economic developments make the distinction between socially desirable and undesirable behaviour more problematic. Besides, economic and financial misconduct is notoriously difficult to detect and investigate. In light of these challenges, legislators and law enforcers have been searching for adequate responses to combat economic and financial crime by adapting existing policies, norms and practices and by creating new enforcement mechanisms. The purpose of this volume is to analyse those challenges in the field of economic and financial crime from different perspectives, and to examine which particular solutions criminal justice systems across Europe give to those challenges. The volume has four parts. The first part focuses on a number of key questions with respect to substantive criminal law, whereas the second part will address issues affecting the administration of justice and criminal procedure. Part three then explores particular challenges concerning multi-agency cooperation and multi-disciplinary investigations. Finally, part four will concentrate on issues regarding shared or integrated enforcement models.

This book deals with the widespread economic and financial crime issues of corruption, the shadow economy and money laundering. It investigates both the theoretical and practical aspects of these crimes, identifying their effects on economic, social and political life. This book presents these causes and effects with a state of the art review and with recent empirical research. It compares the international and transnational aspects of these economic and financial crimes through discussion and critical analysis. This volume will be of interest to researchers and policy makers working to study and prevent economic and financial crime, white collar crime, and organized crime.

Official government policies against money laundering in the EU have been in place for roughly 25 years, after much concerted effort and a great deal of time and money invested. This volume examines the anti-money laundering policy of the EU Member States in connection to the threat of money laundering they face. During a three-year study the authors analyzed the policies in-depth by traveling to 27 Member States to interview over a hundred people involved in the fight against money laundering. The analysis includes an inquiry into the national supervisory architectures, a comparison of the definitions of money laundering used in practice, a breakdown of the role of Financial Intelligence Units and a cost-benefit analysis of anti-money laundering policy. Skillfully assessing the economic and legal effectiveness of anti-money laundering efforts in the EU, this comprehensive study will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners working in economics, banking, finance and law. Contents 1. Introduction and Operationalization 2. Threat of Money Laundering 3. Harmonization of Substantive Norms in Preventative AML 4. Implementing International Conventions and the Third EU Directive 5. Supervisory Architectures in the Preventive AML Policy 6. Definitions of Money Laundering in Practice 7. FIU's in the European Union - Facts and Figures, Functions and Facilities 8. Information Flows and Repressive Enforcement 9. International Cooperation 10. Collection of Statistics 11. Effectiveness: Threat and Corresponding Policy Response 12. Cost Benefit Analysis 13. Summary and Conclusions

This fifth volume of the Governance of Security (GofS) Research Paper series addresses a wide variety of topical issues focusing on European criminal justice and financial and economic crime. The first cluster of articles is concerned with European criminal justice matters particularly relating to EU mutual recognition, such as: conceptualization, unwanted effects in the context of prisoner transfer and sentence execution, impact for cross-border gathering and use of forensic expert evidence, and interrogational fairness standards. A second cluster of articles addresses the subjects of financial and economic crime, ranging from informal economy (among street children) to formal/informal economy (vulnerability of the hotel and catering industry to crime) and white collar crime phenomena like (transnational) environmental crime and corruption. A final cluster groups together a variety of selected topical issues, including juvenile offending and mental disorders, desistance theories, and sexually transmitted infections.

The fight against dirty money is not a new topic, nor a recent problem. It has existed within international and national agendas since the 1980s. Nonetheless, the evolving complexity of criminal skills and networks; the increasingly global dimension of crime; the financial crisis; and the alleged unsatisfactory results of the efforts hitherto undertaken cause us to re-pose and re-discuss some questions. This book addresses several issues concerning the reasons, objectives and scope of national and supranational strategies targeting criminal money, as well as the concrete modalities to overcome its obstacles. The main objective is to explore where the EU stands and where it ought to go, providing useful input for policy-makers and further research. Nevertheless, the problems are not limited to the EU area, and assets – particularly money – cross EU borders much more easily than people do. The reflections developed in the chapters, therefore, aim at going beyond these EU borders. The book is divided into two parts. The first one focuses on the core of asset recovery policies, namely confiscation or forfeiture laws, and explores in particular some issues concerning the respect of fundamental rights. The second part addresses other problematic aspects related to the asset recovery process, such as the return of assets to victim countries, the cross-border investigations on dirty money, and the social use of confiscated assets.