Almost a quarter of a century we are ‘bombarded’ with reports about threats of serious (transnational organised) crime (for profit) and in particular the related criminal revenues. Drug barons are supposed to corrupt and disrupt the financial system by their trillions of dirty money. To stem this tide of criminal infiltration the US administration has persuaded first in 1989 the G-7 countries to establish a costly anti-laundering regime monitored but actually headed by the FATF.…

Last year 1500 migrants died on their way to greener pastures in Europe. How desperate they must be? Meanwhile the industrialised world enacts more severe laws against migrant workers, rather, economic luck seekers, as if aiming at a better life is a crime! History should have made us wiser: against the worst barriers, people have been moving to a better place to work and earn.

In the FBI action against Kim Dotcom uploaders of copy right protected items now also face a laundering charge. It is a good example of the way in which the state bends and strechted the legal tools which were once put into place for a specific threat: first against drug money, then against organised crime (whatever that means), to protect the integrity of the financial system (but undermined by its own most non-integre…

Whence a threat really comes

The financial crisis has taught a lesson which is not new: politicians and the public are easily aroused by fear, particularly of crime. Fear creates an incantation market for policy makers and researchers, invariably confirming these fears. One of these marketed fears concerns the dreaded tsunami of crime-money and the laundering thereof. This is most successfully marketed crime fear products of the past two…