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.

This book is the first attempt to establish 'economic crime' as a new sub-discipline within criminology. Fraud, corruption, bribery, money laundering, price-fixing cartels and intellectual property crimes pursued typically for financial and professional gain, have devastating consequences for the prosperity of economic life. While most police forces in the UK and the USA have an ‘economic crime’ department, and many European bodies such as Europol use the term and develop strategies and structures to deal with it, it is yet to grain traction as a widely used term in the academic community. Economic Crime: From Conception to Response aims to change that and covers: definitions of the key premises of economic crime as the academic sub-discipline within criminology; an overview of the key research on each of the crimes associated with economic crime; public, private and global responses to economic crime across its different forms and sectors of the economy, both within the UK and globally. This book is an essential resource for students, academics and practitioners engaged with aspects of economic crime, as well as the related areas of financial crime, white-collar crime and crimes of the powerful.

Economic crime is, by definition, crime committed to gain profit within an otherwise legitimate business. Examples are illegal pollution, brand name infringement and tax evasion.

Fraud costs the United Kingdom a reported L198 billion per year and the Crime Survey for England and Wales (March 2016) estimates that there are over 5 million incidents of fraud and 2 million cyber-related crimes committed annually. Preventing and investigating fraud has become a priority for police officers and establishing successful, effective strategies to tackle this new volume crime represents a significant and persistent challenge for the police service. Investigation of Fraud and Economic Crime is written by experts from, and affiliated to, the City of London Police, the lead force for fraud in the UK and home to Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). It offers practical, straightforward advice to law enforcement agencies dealing with fraud and economic crimes. The book identifies more than fiftty different types of fraud and sets out the different strategic and tactical considerations in preventing, investigating, and disrupting each one. At the centre of the book is the Fraud Investigation Model (FIM), an effective framework encompassing multiagency working, recovery of evidence and victim management, as well as a range of useful features designed to demystify fraud terminology and provide accessible operational guidance. These include key point boxes, highlighting important learning points and investigation best practice; definition boxes, to cut through legal terminology and connect the law to everyday police work; and flow charts, which tackle complex operational and legal procedures and break them down into simple, easy to follow steps.

Economic crime is a significant feature of the UK's economic landscape and yet despite the government's bold mission statements 'to hold those suspected of financial wrongdoing to account' as part of their 'day of reckoning' and 'serious about white-collar crime' agenda, there is a sense that this is still not being done effectively. This book examines the history of the creation of the UK's anti-economic crime institutions and accompanying legislation, providing a critique of their effectiveness. The book analyses whether the recent regulatory regime is fit for purpose as well as being appropriate for the future. In order to explore how the UK's economic crime strategies could be improved the book takes a comparative approach analysing policy and legislative responses to economic crime in the United States and Australia in order to determine whether the UK could or should import similar structures or laws to improve the enforcement of UK economic crime.

In the last decade a new tool has been developed in the global war against official corruption through the introduction of the offense of "illicit enrichment" in almost every multilateral anti-corruption convention. Illicit enrichment is defined in these conventions to include a reverse burden clause which triggers an automatic presumption that any public official found in "possession of inexplicable wealth" must have acquired it illicitly. However, the reversal of the burden of proof clauses raises an important human rights issue because they conflict with the accused individual’s right to be presumed innocent. Unfortunately, the recent spate of international legislation against official corruption provides no clear guidelines on how to proceed in balancing the right of the accused to be presumed innocent against the competing right of society to trace and recapture illicitly acquired national wealth. Combating Economic Crimes therefore sets out to address what has been left unanswered by these multilateral conventions, to wit, the level of burden of proof that should be placed on a public official who is accused of illicitly enriching himself from the resources of the State, balanced against the protection of legitimate community interests and expectations for a corruption-free society. The book explores the doctrinal foundations of the right to a presumption of innocence and reviews the basic due process protections afforded to all accused persons in criminal trials by treaty, customary international law, and municipal law. The book then goes on to propose a framework for balancing and ‘situationalizing’ competing human rights and public interests in situations involving possible official corruption.

Contemporary transnational criminals take advantage of globalization, trade liberalization, and emerging new technologies to commit a diverse range of crimes. By moving money, goods, services, and people instantaneously they are able to serve purposes of pure economic gain or political violence. This book examines the rise of international economic crime and recent strategies to combat it in the United States and abroad. Focusing on the role of international relations, it draws from case studies in a diverse range of criminality from money laundering to tax evasion. Newly revised and expanded, the second edition of International White Collar Crime incorporates recent developments and updated case studies. New chapters on environmental crimes and securities enforcement under the Dodd–Frank Act continue to make it an essential tool for practicing business, law, and law enforcement.