Economic crime report 2004 - Ekobrottsmyndigheten

An essay by Katarina Jacobsson and David Wästerfors of Lund University’s
Department of Sociology in Methods of Preventing Economic Crime
argues that one way of fighting corruption is to call a spade a spade when
it comes to bribery.
Att förebygga fel och fusk. Metoder för reglering och fusk (Preventing Error
and Cheating: Methods for Regulation and Cheating) (Korsell och Nilsson,
2003) looks at ways that the Government and Parliament can better
structure legislation to prevent economic crime and point various agencies
in that direction as well. A key element of the Government’s effort
is to demand factual information concerning the various guises that economic
crime assumes.
Förebygga ekobrott. Behov och metoder (Preventing Economic Crime: Needs
and Methods) (BRÅ, 2003) is directed toward agencies that combat economic
crime, including the police, prosecutors, EBM and tax crime units.
The report, which is in response to directions from the Government to
work up economic crime prevention methods for the agencies concerned,
contains a series of approaches structured according to the situational
model normally used to counteract traditional offences.
As part of the Government’s assignment, an extensive survey was conducted
among receivers in bankruptcy, tax accountants, enforcement
offices, tax crime investigators, police, prosecutors, etc. A report (Canow,
2003) and an essay on preventive measures (Canow, 2003a) review the
survey findings.
An upcoming BRÅ report by Bengt Larsson, senior lecturer at Göteborg
University’s Sociology Department, entitled Revisorers anmälningsskyldighet
(The Duty of Accountants to Report) presents the results of his
evaluation in the area.
On behalf of BRÅ, Sören Wibe, now at the Swedish College of Forestry in
Umeå, published in 1990 the findings of an extensive survey on attitudes
toward economic crime. His follow-up study in 2003 was an attempt to
determine whether anything had changed. The results suggest that the
public is more receptive to the idea of stricter tax supervision as a means
of combating economic crime. In addition, more people now approve of
efforts to fight such offences in the business world.
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