LIST OF PANELS

Organised crime groups infiltrate into legitimate businesses in different ways with the aim of fulfilling a number of objectives including laundering of illicit proceeds, controlling the territory and the political elite, increasing profits, dismantling competitors and increasing the social consensus. In terms of public policy, there is the need to design more efficient policy tools to prevent and control these criminal phenomena. These include, for example, more precise measures to assess the risk of infiltration, money laundering and corruption across areas and processes, more effective regulation to recover criminal assets and a range of tools to successfully reintroduce confiscated assets back in the legitimate economy. Submissions discussing these issues from different academic perspectives (criminology, sociology, political economy, law) are welcome.  

Organised crime groups infiltrate into legitimate businesses in different ways with the aim of fulfilling a number of objectives including laundering of illicit proceeds, controlling the territory and the political elite, increasing profits, dismantling competitors and increasing the social consensus. According to recent evidences, the damage to the international community is huge. Criminal infiltration into the legitimate economy negatively impacts on citizens’ health and security (as businesses controlled by organised crime may use or sell unsafe products or sub-standard materials), distorts the market competition, produces losses of productivity and jobs and decreases  the efficiency and the transparency of the public administration and the political system. In this sense, organised crime infiltration is emerging as the next challenge from both a research and a public policy point of view. In terms of research, despite recent studies at European and international level (such as Transcrime projects OCP or ARIEL), this topic has been understudied by scholars, and there is the need to better understand how and where infiltrations occur, what are the investment strategies of the different criminal organisations and what are the vulnerabilities (in the business, political and regulatory system) facilitating intrusions by organised crime in the legitimate environment. In terms of public policy, there is the need to design more efficient policy tools to prevent and control these criminal phenomena. These include, for example, more precise measures to assess the risk of infiltration, money laundering and corruption across areas and processes, more effective regulation to recover criminal assets and a range of tools to successfully reintroduce  confiscated assets back in the legitimate economy. In this panel, scholars from different fields (criminology, sociology, political economy, law) and representatives of the public sphere will identify the main challenges in this field, and discuss possible ways to address them.