National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

In cases of investment fraud, potential victims were found to be selected from
lists of address details that were sold by corrupt employees of a company.
These are Ponzi schemes 63 .
Crime-related factors and expectations
Most of the crime-related factors stated above in section 5.2.2 also apply
to corruption in the business community.
Two opposite trends are occurring, which make it difficult to comment on
possible future developments. The first trend is the increased emphasis on
integrity and the second trend is the increased vulnerability of individuals.
There are no good reasons to assume that corruption in the business community
will decrease in the coming four-year period. The interest of criminal
organisations in help from the inside will remain as strong, or may even increase.
The scale of corruption in the business community is therefore expected to stay
at least the same.
Conclusion
For NTA 2008 no separate research was conducted into corruption in the
business community. However, the reports on which this NTA is based frequently
mention corrupt contacts of criminal organisations within the business
community. This justifies the discussion of this subject and its inclusion on the
list of criminal activities. However, as no separate research was conducted, there
is not enough empirical knowledge to be able to qualify the threat level. As
a result, corruption in the business community is designated as a blind spot.
5.3 Use of violence by criminal organisations
5.3.1 Introduction and scope
In NTA 2004 various forms of violence were studied and qualified. In the
reassessment project, as explained in chapter 1 and in the introduction to
this chapter, the following subjects were analysed for NTA 2008 64 :
63
This is a classic type of investment fraud according to the pyramid system: the high returns
promised are initially paid using the investments of new victims. Named after the fraudster
Charles Ponzi.
64
In the final section a single qualification is assigned to the use of violence by criminal
organisations. No qualifications of the level of threat were given to forms of violence separately.
186 National Threat Assessment 2008 – Organised crime