Economic crimes

Economic crimes

Economic crimes cover a wide range of offences, including swindling and fraud, money laundering, corruption, intellectual property crime and environmental crime. Criminal investigations primarily tackling some other form of crime, such as drug trafficking, terrorist activities or trafficking in human beings (THB), usually also include economic crimes, such as money laundering.

Economic crimes often have a cross-border element: criminals move their assets to other countries to try to avoid freezing or confiscation orders. Working together to trace, freeze and confiscate assets that have been acquired by breaking the law is a strategic priority in the European Union’s fight against organised crime and a major focus of Eurojust’s casework.

Eurojust has built up significant institutional knowledge of solutions and best practice, which can significantly improve the effectiveness of the investigations, prosecutions and ultimately the recovery of criminal proceeds.

Cases by crime type in 2022
 
A single investigation can fall into several crime categories if several types of crime are concerned. For further information, see the Data Annex.

Crime type

Ongoing cases

New cases

Swindling and fraud

1 655

2 028

Drug trafficking

1 061

1 054

Money-laundering

690

1 192

MOCG

398

463

Cybercrime

173

269

THB

124

218

Migrant smuggling

132

191

Corruption

87

224

PIF

112

151

Terrorism

53

150

Environmental crime

14

41

Intelectual Property crime

19

20

Core Internnational Crimes

26

9

Swindling and fraud

4190 cases, 69 jits, 128 coordination meetings, 8 action days

In a general sense, the crime type of swindling and fraud comprises the act of illegally depriving another person or entity of money, property or legal rights. The perpetrator deliberately deceives the victim about facts. This deception results in an error on the part of the person who has been deceived, which in turn causes the victim, for instance, to hand over money, surrender things or provide services. This causes the deceived person or a third person to suffer financial loss and, at the same time, leads to an unlawful enrichment of the perpetrator or another person.

Swindling and fraud come in many shapes and forms, such as investment fraud, insurance fraud, benefit fraud, tax and excise fraud or consumer fraud. Since these crimes usually combine high profits and low risks, they are popular with organised crime groups (OCGs). The perpetrators often operate across borders, benefitting from differences in national legislations and adding complexity to the investigations required to uncover these criminal acts. Moreover, recent years have seen a rapid growth in fraud committed on the internet, with criminals taking advantage of huge numbers of unsuspecting users.

To guarantee effective prosecution of swindling and fraud, international judicial cooperation is paramount.

Types of fraud

Some of the most common types of fraud include:

  • tax fraud: the illegal evasion of taxes by individuals or entities, ranging from knowingly underreporting taxable income or overestimating business deductions to sophisticated international VAT carousel frauds;
  • excise fraud: a variation of tax fraud in which import duties or taxes are evaded by smuggling or illegally importing excise goods, illegally manufacturing excise goods or diverting excise goods, for example alcohol, cigarettes or fuel;
  • counterfeiting: fraudulently imitating or copying items with the intent to deceive, for instance consumer products, food, pharmaceuticals, technical products such as parts for aircraft or automobiles, artworks, money or documents (forgery);
  • investment fraud: luring investors to make purchase or sale decisions based on false information, often in variations of boiler room schemes, Ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes, resulting in high losses of the victims, and
  • benefit fraud: illegally claiming benefits a person is not entitled to, for instance unemployment benefits, grants, pensions or compensations, by providing false information or not reporting changes in the circumstances determining the eligibility for receiving such benefits.

Money laundering

2224 cases, 69 jits, 136 coordination meetings, 6 action days

Transnational criminal networks have one thing in common: money. Organised criminal activity is profit-driven, and all crime groups need resources to finance their activities. This is where money laundering comes into play. The introduction of illegally obtained assets into the legal financial and economic cycle aims to provide criminals with explainable and seemingly legal resources that make it increasingly difficult to be traced back to their true source.

Effective prosecution of money laundering including the recovery of illegally obtained assets contributes significantly to a successful fight against organised crime. As profits are taken away from perpetrators, crime becomes less attractive. At the same time, decisive action against money laundering prevents assets from being used to commit further criminal offenses.

Stages of money laundering

Money laundering is not a single act, but rather a process that can be divided into three stages.

  1. Placement stage: the proceeds of crime are, for the first time, introduced into the legal financial system, often broken up into smaller amounts. The risk of being discovered is particularly high in this phase.
  2. Layering stage: financial transactions take place, which are often complex and involving banks and/or companies in multiple countries. The main objective of this phase is to separate the illegally acquired funds from their source, thereby obscuring the paper trail and severing any connection to the original crime. Through mostly international transactions, the funds are moved around between several actors in order not to be discovered. For this purpose, loopholes in the legal provisions of the respective countries may be used.
  3. Integration stage: the money comes back to the criminal from a seemingly legal source. The aim is to reunite the money with the criminal without attracting attention, while giving the money the appearance of legal origin. This money is subsequently reinvested in the legal economic cycle, for example through real estate, luxury goods or business ventures.

Corruption

354 cases, 8 jits, 13 coordination meetings

Corruption undermines the functioning of the state and public authorities at all levels and is a key enabler of organised crime.

Environmental crime

69 cases, 4 jits, 6 coordination meetings, 1 action day

Environmental crime is the fourth-largest criminal activity in the world, growing at a rate of between 5% and 7% per year, according to an Interpol and UN Environment Programme estimate. This increase, combined with the organised, transnational nature of environmental crime, requires administrative, law enforcement and judicial authorities to adopt a coordinated approach at national and international level.

A new casework report on environmental crime, prepared during 2020 and published in January 2021, showed that early Eurojust involvement allows for effective international cooperation, coordination from the start of investigations, the effective exchange of information and the development of common strategies.

Intellectual property crime

54 cases, 2 jits, 4 coordination meetings

Eurojust supports national judicial authorities in dealing with infringements of intellectual property rights, which are often related to other crime types such as tax fraud, cybercrime, crimes against human health or trafficking in substandard products.

Eurojust supported a growing number of large cases tackling this form of crime in 2020, notably several large-scale operations tackling illegal online streaming services and pirate-copied movies and TV series, including Operation Sundance, initiated by the Liaison Prosecutor of the USA. Another major coordinated action concerned ‘K boxes’ used for illegal audiovisual streaming services in more than 20.000 households and was initiated at the request of the Liaison Prosecutor of Switzerland.

In 2021, Eurojust and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) established the Intellectual Property Crime Project (IPC Project), aimed at boosting cooperation and ensuring a more coherent and robust response against IP infringements across the EU.

Publications

27 October 2023|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
The use of advertising to fund websites and mobile apps that offer pirated content has become an insidious practice within the online piracy landscape. This flyer gives an overview of the scale of the problem, the actors operating within the advertising ecosystem, and the types and formats of...
20 October 2022|AVAILABLE IN 24 LANGUAGES
08 September 2022|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
Environmental crime is expanding rapidly, and is one of the most profitable forms of illegal activity in the world. It is a crime type with a specific set of challenges. Cases are complex, international, and often linked with other crimes, while also requiring highly specialised expertise and...
01 September 2022|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
The number of money laundering cases registered at Eurojust has steadily increased since 2016, representing 12–14 % of all registered cases. Eurojust organised 600 coordination meetings between involved national authorities, and supported 33 action days and the establishment of 116 new joint...
05 May 2022|AVAILABLE IN 24 LANGUAGES
Eurojust Casework on Corruption: 2016–2021 Insights presents key findings based on Eurojust's corruption casework and expertise built up over the years. It is the Agency's first dedicated publication in the corruption field. The report aims to support national authorities dealing with cross-border...
02 March 2022|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
23 November 2021|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
The Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Agencies’ Network connects the EU Agencies that contribute to the area of freedom, security and justice. Together the JHA Agencies support the EU and its Member States in the implementation of the EU’s objectives in the fields of migration, asylum and external...
27 October 2021|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
The National Desks at Eurojust opened linked cases to provide operational and legal assistance, including the creation and funding of a JIT between the Belgian and Dutch authorities, with the involvement of Eurojust and Europol. During a joint action day supported by a coordination centre at...
27 October 2021|AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH
During a coordinated action day in the Netherlands and Belgium, the activities of the suspected Dutch company were shut down by the Dutch authorities because of serious health and safety risks. The assets of the main suspect and of the suspect’s company were seized. The action day was a joint effort...
01 September 2021|AVAILABLE IN 24 LANGUAGES
This leaflet accompanies the Eurojust Guidelines on How to Prosecute Investment Fraud. These guidelines detail the legal and operational issues that prosecutors may come across when investigating and prosecuting investment fraud cases, and outline the support which can be provided by both Eurojust...