Economic crime report 2004 - Ekobrottsmyndigheten

4. It has a definite focus, though it can be broken down into different
spheres of activity
5. It can be planned and managed in advance with relative assurance
6. It is linked to fixed premises, locations or areas
7. It involves a number of people
8. Those people, who make up a decisionmaking and functional hierarchy,
are each replaceable
9. Decisions, information and communication – as well as the flow of
money, goods and services – follow pre-established patterns
Compare that with perhaps the most oft-used definition of economic
crime among researchers, as formulated by German criminologist Klaus
Tiedemann.
“Economic crime is illegal behaviour, the effect of which disturbs or
threatens economic life or the economic system such that not only the
interests of private individuals are affected.”
The primary criteria that distinguish organized from economic crime are
that it be criminal in itself and involve a number of people.
Lars Korsell 1 compared the AMOB report on organized crime in 1977
with the findings of a report that the Swedish National Council for Crime
Prevention (BRÅ) and Lund University compiled on the same subject in
2002.
Korsell concluded that organized crime had changed greatly during that
quarter century. Today it operates in the market, sells many goods and
services just like in the regular private sector, and has no need of clubs that
serve alcohol without licenses. A reasonable assumption is that organized
crime will expand along with general crossborder trade and the growing
ability of information technology to hold various networks together.
Such activities are now carried out in just such networks, as opposed to
the hierarchical, Godfather-run structures portrayed in the cinema. The
appeal of the industrialized world is likely to boost human trafficking, an
unknown concept 25 years ago. There are indications that corruption,
which has hit bottom internationally, may grow – a threat that agencies
should take seriously.
4.
EBM Threat Analysis 2002.
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