Duties to Distrust: The Decentring of Economic and White-collar Crime Policing in Sweden

Abstract

This article examines a general trend towards the 'decentring' of the policing of economic and whitecollar crime in Sweden in recent decades. As a theoretical point of departure, we discuss how the 'decentred policing' concept can link the theoretical approaches of regulation and policing studies. We then analyse five empirical cases in which private actors have been given duties and incentives to report others' crimes, in order to give a detailed account of the expansion and effects of the decentring of business and finance policing. The five cases concern the policing of bankruptcy crimes, money laundering, company management crimes, market abuse and insider dealings, and illegal cartels. The article ends by discussing some possible causes and consequences of this tendency.

Client privilege, compliance and the rule of law: Swedish lawyers and money laundering prevention

“…Moreover, as we discussed in the introduction, the role of front-line worker for FATF-style regulation may clash with other interests of the actors concerned. Notably, crime prevention may clash with business interests, private actors may in fact have a dis-incentive to report [8], and private actors may themselves be at risk of being primary offenders (e.g. [21,22,24]).…”

“…6 Though acknowledging that the question of to what extent lawyers themselves may be implicated in money laundering crimes is well worthy of investigation, we did not have the possibility to explicitly probe this sensitive issue in the present study. 7 Please refer to Engdahl and Larsson [8] for a discussion of how the duty to report crimes in the Swedish context primarily befalls the police, tax-and customs authorities, as well as some other specified actors, notably those engaged in social services provision. This makes the AML/CTF obligation for lawyers, and other regulated industries, to report suspicious client and their transactions, stand out.…”

“…( [52], p. 21) However, in the view of FATF, lawyers should rather be treated more like other DNFBPs (and DNFBPs more like banks) in relation to AML/CTF [53]. Sweden 8 The total number of reports from lawyers to the Swedish Financial Police during the five-year period 2011-2015 amounted to eighteen [50], making the average number of reports less than four per annum. By way of comparison, in the United Kingdom, the number of reports from 'independent legal professionals' during the one year period 2014/2015 amounted to 3827 [54].…”

“…As Tsingou [7] observes: 'while most of the public AML discourse refers to countries and criminals, the actors to be found at the forefront of AML activities are, in practice, mostly private. ' In relation to private actors, FATF evokes the idea of a public-private partnership to crime prevention [8][9][10]. Put briefly, regulated industries are encouraged to pro-actively prevent crime rather than passively comply with the rules.…”

“…They do not necessarily follow the intent of the law, but can rather be expected to use regulation to promote their business interests [15]. Several types of business actors do in fact 'have incentives not to disclose or report crimes and offences' ( [8], p. 515, emphasis in original). Taking such dis-incentives into consideration, 'defendable compliance' [16], rather than proactive policing, seems a likely outcome.…”