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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2024
Economic crime
Illegal activity that involves money, assets, or finance. Corruption can be a form of economic crime when the benefits or losses that result from its commission are financial. Also referred to as financial crime.
Economic crime and corruption are often erroneously conflated. There are some important distinctions between the terms.
Corruption is not always a crime: there is a broad consensus in the social sciences that certain practices may be corrupt, even if they are not proscribed by law (see legal corruption). The private gain derived from corruption need not be financial or money based. Often gains are much broader, involving social status gains or the consolidation of power. The avoidance of loss or the gratification gained by harming others might also constitute the private gain from the commission of a corrupt act.
Economic crime encompasses a much broader range of activities than those involving corrupt actors. Crimes such as theft and fraud can be committed by anyone in society, as opposed to corrupt acts, which characteristically involve actors invested with some form of entrusted power. Money laundering is an example of an economic crime, which is often related to corruption and corrupt networks, but does not in itself constitute corruption unless it involves an abuse of entrusted power.
RDP
Further reading
Button, M., B. Hock & D. Shepherd 2022. Economic Crime: From Conception to Response. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gottschalk, P. 2010. “Categories of financial crime”. Journal of Financial Crime 17(4): 441– 58.
Lord, N. & M. Levi 2023. “Economic crime, economic criminology, and serious crimes for economic gain: on the conceptual and disciplinary (dis)order of the object of study”. Journal of Economic Criminology, 100014.
Electoral fraud/vote buying
Interference with or the manipulation of aspects of an election or improper influence over voters to shape the result.
There are many ways of fraudulently influencing elections. Where this is done in ways that abuse entrusted power to achieve a private gain, such behaviour is likely to be corrupt. The private gain might include a benefit accrued by a political party rather than an individual.
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