ABSTRACT
The finance industry plays a significant role in facilitating crime (Platt 2015). Drug-trafficking, human smuggling, piracy and terrorist activity, for example, would be unthinkable without financial institutions making investment capital available and without their being prepared to receive the subsequent illegitimate proceeds. By exclusively focusing on this role, however, the conclusion might be drawn that financial crime is an aspect of conventional criminality, and the finance industry an ancillary to organized crime. While it can be argued that the financial sphere offers criminal groups a key ‘service’, other conduct found in this sphere belongs to the area of white-collar and corporate crime. These include money-laundering, tax-evasion, rate-rigging, mis-selling and fraud. The financial crisis of 2008 showed a combination of behaviours and practices straddling the areas of conventional and white-collar crime. It also showed that the ambiguity, ubiquity and evolving nature of financial crime makes the separation between acceptable and unacceptable practices extremely problematic.
