Table Of ContentStudies of Organized Crime 20
Monica Violeta Achim
Sorin Nicolae Borlea
Economic
and Financial
Crime
Corruption, shadow economy, and
money laundering
Studies of Organized Crime
Series Editor
Dina Siegel
Willem Pompe Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
This series will publish theoretically significant books in two primary areas. One is
the political economy of organized crime and criminality whether at the transnational,
national, regional or local levels (focus on financial crime, political corruption,
environmental crime and the expropriation of resources from developing nations).
The other is human rights violations particularly in Third World countries.
Manuscripts that cover either historical or contemporary issues of the above,
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particularly interested in publishing the work of sophisticated junior scholars.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6564
Monica Violeta Achim • Sorin Nicolae Borlea
Economic and Financial
Crime
Corruption, shadow economy, and money
laundering
Monica Violeta Achim Sorin Nicolae Borlea
Faculty of Economics and Business Faculty of Economics
Administration University of Oradea
Babes-Bolyai University Oradea, Romania
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Faculty of Economics, Informatics
and Engineering
‘Vasile Goldis’ Western University of Arad
Arad, Romania
ISSN 1571-5493
Studies of Organized Crime
ISBN 978-3-030-51779-3 ISBN 978-3-030-51780-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51780-9
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Preface
The present book deals with economic and financial crime issues regarding its most
spread forms of our days – corruption, shadow economy and money laundering.
The approaches throughout the book focus on both the theoretical and practical
sides of the investigation of causes leading to the committing of such blameable acts
and to the identification of their effects on the economic, social and political life as
well as of the measures to prevent, fight against and investigate them.
Unlike other researches in the field, this book brings a significant added value by
means of a structured presentation of the main important economic and financial
crimes (corruption, shadow economy and money laundering) in the light of causes
and effects produced, with knowledge of the state of the art, but also with empirical
studies carried out by the authors within some of their own researches. Also, the
causal approaches from the perspective of economic, political, social and cultural
determinants represent an important added value brought to the present literature
researches. The comparisons, discussions and critical analysis of economic and
financial types of crime committed at the international level increase the additional
value of this book.
This book is addressed to large categories of users represented by researchers
and business experts, but is also addressed to decision-making authorities at national
and international level, who, in this way, will know the causes and effects of these
economic and financial crimes and will finally adopt the best solutions to fight
against such blameable acts. This book gathers the vast existing economic and
financial crime literature within a condensed work, providing an extremely useful
database and research themes to develop advanced research studies destined to
researchers in the field of economic and financial crime.
Thus, the core audience of this book are most likely academic scholars, students
and researchers in law and social sciences (economics, sociology, criminology,
political science and economic psychology), and experts working in political insti-
tutions (ministries of finance, international organizations, e.g. OECD).
v
vi Preface
We are aware that the theme approached through the present book is very com-
plex and generous; therefore, we fully assume the limitations of the current research
work. With gratitude in advance, we remain open to any opinion, comment or
criticism from the readers regarding improvement of the judgements used as well as
of the book as a whole.
Cluj-Napoca, Romania Monica Violeta Achim
Arad, Romania Sorin Nicolae Borlea
A valuable, accessible and up-to-date resource for academic scholars in economics,
political science and criminology, sociology and economic psychology and for
experts in political institutions dealing with financial crime, corruption, money
laundering, shadow economy, and tax avoidance.
– Prof. Dr Erich Kirchler, University of Vienna
Financial and economic crimes especially in periods of crises are dangerous chal-
lenges of democratic systems. The authors address important issues of a modern
economic system in their book. This book offers a broad variety of analysis from a
scientific and practical standpoint.
– Maximilian Edelbacher, University of Vienna
Acknowledgements
Warm and special thanks to Professor Ilie Parpucea, PhD, for providing useful
suggestions in the area of statistics and economics during our hard work over many
years in the field of economic and financial crime research.
Special thanks to PhD Candidate Delia Dragomir, PhD Candidate Camelia
Catana, PhD Candidate Narcisa Bodescu and authorized person Alexandra
Pescariu for supervising the translation of our book.
vii
About This Book
The book titled Economic and financial crime: Corruption, Shadow Economy and
Money Laundering. Causes, effects and solutions. Theoretical and practical
approaches” is structured on four chapters as follows:
The Chap. 1 entitled “Economic and Financial Crime: Theoretical and
Methodological Approaches” presents historical issues, concepts, forms of eco-
nomic and financial crime and their showing up areas as well as the highlighting of
their characteristic features (volume, intensity, direction and frequency). Then, this
first chapter reveals the concepts of corruption, shadow economy, tax avoidance and
money laundering and presents the measuring instruments of corruption, shadow
economy and money laundering as well as the some case studies.
The Chap. 2 entitled “Determining Economic and Political Factors of Economic
Crime” presents the main economic and political causes of such acts, resulting in
the reviewing of the specialized literature. Some of these important causes we iden-
tified are: the level of the economic development, the tax pressure, the pubic gover-
nance, the corporate governance and soundness of the banking system. Based on the
specialized literature review, for each of these causes, the conceptual issues includ-
ing the practical ways of measurement as well as the influence of these factors on
the level of corruption, shadow economy and money laundering have been high-
lighted. Also we have documented with our own empirical studies the influences of
these variables on economic and financial crime, adding a significant value to
this work.
The Chap. 3 entitled “Determining Behaviour Factors of the Economic and
Financial Crime” is focused to behaviour factors which determine and influence the
economic and financial crimes. Among these factors, particular attention is paid to
cultural factors, religion, tax morale, trust (focussing on the trust in the state) and
happiness condition (subjective well-being) of individuals. For each of these fac-
tors, there are theoretical approaches including definitions of concepts as well as
practical ways of measuring these variables, indicating some possible databases
ix
x About This Book
available worldwide. Additionally, the chapter brings documentation from the spe-
cialized literature about the existence of some causality relations between
behavioural factors and economic and financial crimes as well as our own empirical
studies.
The final chapter entitled “Effects of Economic and Financial Crimes: Ways of
Fighting Against” emphasizes the effects of such economic and financial crimes at
economic, financial social and political levels. The presentations summarize the
main types of effects of the economic and financial crimes based on a large review
of the specialized literature. In order to fight against these crimes, this chapter also
reveal the international bodies and initiatives to prevent, fight against and investi-
gate the economic and financial crime. Finally, short allegations are made about
using judicial expertise as specific technical method used to investigate economic
and financial crime.
