Financial and organised crime in Europe: Converging paradigms of control?

Based partly on earlier research undertaken for the EC-funded Falcone project, this chapter compares preventive strategies used to reduce on the one hand, organised crime and on the other, high-level fraud and other financial crime. Traditionally, these have been treated as distinctly different kinds of criminal activity, undertaken by different kinds of offender, hence attracting different kinds of response. However, it is increasingly recognised not only that the distinction between them is less clear than often portrayed, but that more systematic use of preventive and regulatory approaches (currently much more common in the control of financial crime) could enhance the effectiveness of responses to organised crime as a whole and, vice versa, that some of the covert policing methods now established as standard weapons against organised criminal gangs might be used more often against financial crime.