Økonomisk Kriminalitet Nordiske Perspektiver - Scandinavian ...

today. They are very low profile and as big in smuggling as in legitimate business.”
Alcohol as such is a legitimate product, and business is business, as “Christian”
sees it:
“Just the same actually, it` s about a normal product, alcohol. A risk, yes, but one
kind of product is just like another. We have importers, wholesalers and so on
down the line; people with a discreet lifestyle. Duty and tax evasion; that` s all that
we are doing.”
Laundering just “small” amounts of “black” money each time, in a legitimate
company over several years, gives big “white” money in the long run. “Easy road,”
relates “Per” who owns a big company and was in legitimate business for many
years before he combined legitimate business and smuggling. The taxman` s eyes
are on “white” income which is under-taxed he explains, not on “black” money
which is invested in legitimate business, to be laundered and voluntarily taxed.
“Per” belongs to a milieu, which is well informed about the capacity of the tax
authorities, and his life is just like the story he tells.
The two sources of income, the legitimate and illegitimate, explain why company
smugglers succeed. The legitimate incomes make it easier, unlike the professional
smugglers, to cut illegal prices for competitive reasons or to switch to markets that
are less profitable but safer, like contraband - wine, beer or cigarettes, for example.
(Johansen 2007) Anti smuggling campaigns are not an annual police priority, but
they are a hard lesson for everyone in the business when there is one. Smugglers
with legitimate incomes in “reserve” can wait and see. They know that time will be
on their side. No crusade lasts forever, not even for very long. Other smugglers run
big risks, when they are in desperate need of money, there and then. R.T. Naylor
asks whether the initiative in bringing organised criminals into legitimate
businesses necessarily comes from the criminals. The main problem today may not
be criminals taking over and subverting legal business so much as legal business
using criminal methods. (Naylor 2002) He is probably right, although legitimate
businessmen in co–operation with career criminals to make money by smuggling
alcohol is an alliance that has been known in Norway since the First World War.
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