Abstract
European white-collar crime: Exploring the nature of European realities brings the study of white-collar crime back to its European roots by providing a contemporary account of those seemingly legitimate ‘crimes in the suites’ (Bonger, 1916). This edited volume brings readers an innovative, critical, inviting, and introspective account of European corporate and white-collar crime.
The introductory chapter reflects on what ‘European’ means for the study of white-collar crime and explains the book’s inspiration taken from the European Working Group on Organisational and White-Collar Crime. The 14 chapters that follow are by authors from across the world covering a variety of pertinent and timely topics.
Several chapters highlight the importance of pushing the methodological boundaries of the study of corporate and white-collar crime as well as of going beyond criminology’s disciplinary boundaries to understand white-collar crime and its regulation and enforcement. In suggesting Europe could be a natural experiment to study crime prevention approaches, Jeroen Maesschalck (Chapter 2) calls on scholars to broaden the “what works in the prevention of corporate and occupational crime” and to question “what works for whom in what circumstances” (p.32), thereby demonstrating how both business ethics and regulation literature can help scholars and practitioners embrace ideological pluralism and contextual sensitivity. Nicholas Lord, Karin van Wingerde and Michael Levi (Chapter 4) continue this quest for methodological innovation and for avoiding “decontextualized universal accounts” of corruption (p.68) by proposing deliberative methods to foster a theory-driven, comparative, iterative and interactive study of corruption in Europe. Joe McGrath and Deirdre Healy (Chapter 14) provide a comparative account of white-collar crime in Ireland and the US, arguing the importance of qualitatively contextualized comparisons of criminal justice statistics. Karin van Wingerde and Anna Merz (Chapter 7) conclude that responses to money laundering across Europe are fragmented and yet show a remarkably similar punitive trend and call upon corporate crime scholars to include detection probability in future analyses. Clarissa Meerts (Chapter 11) brings attention to an often-forgotten source of data about white-collar crime: the private investigations of internal financial crime. She also contributes to theoretical discussions about the role of public and private actors – whose relationship she identifies as a separation rather than a cooperation – and draws attention to the diversity of private policing of relevance to researching white-collar crime. Sunčana Roksandić (Chapter 3) offers insights from the international relations literature with its focus on human security to connect the prioritization of white-collar crime criminalization and enforcement – or lack thereof – to the role of elites in Europe’s internal and external security policy. In scrutinizing the role of European governmental elites, she touches upon a topic that comes back in several other chapters: the twofold role played by European (EU or Council of Europe) institutions.
On one hand, European institutions help safeguard public interests and develop policy to counter harmful corporate behavior. Analyzing the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study of the EU’s policy on market abuse, Sarah Wilson (Chapter 5) identifies that while the European (Single Market) roots of market abuse, which is elsewhere known as securities violations, are distinctly European, the development to criminalize this behavior – rather than sanction it administratively – fits global trends. Judith van Erp and Tess van der Linden (Chapter 13) study SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) against NGOs, journalists and academics as a practice that fits within the realm of corporate counterplay against social control of corporate crime. They conclude that SLAPP suits are largely addressed with a divergence of judicial approaches throughout EU Member States and argue for raising judicial awareness of this practice. While writing this book review, the EU Commission’s Action against abusive litigation (SLAPP) targeting journalists and rights defenders is in the process of legislative feedback. Their chapter thus comes at an ideal time to help push the agenda on this topic.
On the other hand, several chapters touch upon the (in)ability of these same European institutions to uphold public interests when faced with economic pressure and global political or economic developments. Jon Davies (Chapter 10) discusses labor exploitation in the European construction industry as a routinized practice resulting from the EU’s policy of ‘free movement’ that has created significant governance gaps. Ekatarina Gladkova (Chapter 8) identifies routinized food production harm by Northern-Ireland’s agro-industrial livestock farming as ensuing from the structural asymmetries created by the EU’s subsidy system. In a comparative analysis of European countries, Liz Campbell (Chapter 15) identifies the increased use of deferred prosecution agreements as a largely pragmatic development, fitting within a global trend to settle with corporations, irrespective of whether these settlements are effective. Katie Benson (Chapter 6) considers global developments in anti-money laundering and then contextualizes them based on the experience of legal professionals. Éva Inzelt and Tamás Bezsenyi (Chapter 12) discuss inabilities to address structural opportunities for white-collar crime in their analysis of Hungarian cartel cases, which they recognize as examples of state-corporate crime due to the influence of political elites in the emergence and perseverance of these cartels as well as the regulatory – rather than criminal – approach taken in addressing them. The enforcement of laws about collusion and corruption is also identified as problematic by Anna Markovska and Iryna Soldatenko (Chapter 9) in their chapter on Ukraine. Focusing particularly on the inadequacy of labor laws in logging and mining, they identify the ambiguous drafting of legislation as the culprit and contextualize this within the country’s Soviet legacy. These and other cases discussed in this book, make clear how Europe is challenged in coming to grips with its history, especially its close ties between political and economic elites, and even (organized) criminal groups. Considering the anti-EU sentiments present throughout the EU and the changing political landscape of global alliances with the war in Ukraine, the impact of these developments on the governance of white-collar crime is an important avenue for future research.
The book concludes with three chapters by international scholars who reflect on white-collar crime and corporate crime research in Europe. Melissa Rorie (Chapter 16) sees the ‘uniqueness’ of this research as its varied use of theories and methods and encourages North American scholars to learn from this approach. Diego Zysman-Quirós (Chapter 17) challenges future European white-collar crime researchers to “think beyond sovereign stories” (p. 274) to embrace the cultural, legal, economic, and political diversity of the European context. Fiona Haines (Chapter 18) sees in Europe a possibility to further advance collective knowledge of corporate (mis)behavior, but also advises to include a diversity of corporate crime problems, contextualize the learning outcomes, and integrate insights from other disciplines (p. 295).
Overall, the ways in which global trends relate to white-collar crime and its regulation come to the fore throughout this book, relating to the book’s central question about what is – or is not – distinctly European about white-collar crime. Albeit that some chapters could have been more introspective, taken together the book undoubtedly goes beyond standalone cases of companies, individual white-collar criminals, or countries to draw comparative lessons about trends of divergence and convergence in etiological characteristics of white-collar crimes and its regulation with relevance beyond the European context. The book also reflects the critical and innovative theoretical and methodological thinking that I have experienced to be at the core of research on corporate and white-collar crime in Europe. This has been shaped by the many conference panels, workshops and informal get-togethers organized by or attended to by the inspirational authors that are part of this collection. It has also been shaped by a research culture that is open to a diversity of insights, is introspective about the developments of the discipline, dares to push itself beyond its own comfort zones and stays true to these values in mentoring young scholars. An exploration well-worth continuing if you ask me.