Follow the Money. Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Financial Aspects of Organized Crime’

Abstract

Organized crime emerged suddenly on the political and law enforcement agenda in manyEuropean countries in the 1980s and 1990s. The increasing focus on financial aspects oforganized crime followed suit, but at a much slower pace. Anti-money laundering efforts wereactively promoted by some governments and organizations such as the Financial Action TaskForce (FATF),butwerealsoopposedbyotherparties,as somemeasures imposea highburdenoncertaineconomicsectors(seeforareview,e.g.,LeviandReuter2006;Levi2013;Kilchling2014; Halliday et al. 2014). These sustained anti-money laundering efforts gained newmomentum through the shocking terrorist attacks in New York (2001), Madrid (2004), andLondon (2005), and several recent incidents in European countries and abroad. Consequently,the discussion has been widened from organized crime (with a strong emphasis on drugtrafficking) to terrorism and terrorist funding, although these phenomena and the financialaspects of these phenomena may be quite different in several respects.The discussion on money laundering has a strong policy focus and is dominated byuntested assumptions about offenders and offender behavior, and the impact of criminalnetworks and criminal activities on society. Can organized crime activities and terrorism belumped together or should they be treated separately? What influence does money have onthese phenomena and is this differentfor different aspects such as investing money in criminalactivities, moving and laundering proceeds of crime, and investing money in legal economy?Whatis the impact ofmoney launderingonthe integrity of thefinancialsystem andonsocietyas a whole? Is it really a big threat and in what respect? Can money laundering be curbedthrough specific crime prevention strategies and investigation strategies (‘follow the money’)?And how should these new strategies be integrated in the law enforcement system?Empirical research into financial aspects of organized crime is very important to test theassumptions that are part of public debate, but are often taken for granted, not explicated, andput to the empirical test. Despite the importance of this task, academic researchers — with afew notable exceptions — have not paida lotof attention to these salientquestions. Therefore,