White-collar crime is one of the types of crime that is traditionally referred to as corporate fraud. It is usually understood as occupational fraud and abuse of staff against the organization and its assets: bribes, kickbacks in private business, theft of an organization's property, assets misappropriation, and abuse of official powers for the purpose of obtaining financial or other benefits. It is clear if we look through the ACFE figures which this association "studies."
Having worked in the field of fraud prevention since 2000, we strongly disagree with this definition. The ugly phenomena that we observe massively in real life, which for some reason are called business, forced us to completely rethink both the concept of corporate fraud and the definition of white-collar fraud and, of course, to propose other methods of dealing with them. Let's talk right away. When we were faced with the task of forming the internal area of the site and filling it with worthy materials on this issue, to our great surprise, we found more than moderate interest from researchers in this area, despite the great importance of this issue for business efficiency, public administration and combating corruption. And the only sources ACFE and The IIA completely disavowed themselves in light of the current state of the American economy.
In this regard, we offer you a series of our own materials, which, in addition to academic questions, contain a completely rational grain that allows applying the information obtained from them in practice.
Based on about 20 years of practice, we have formulated our own definition of the concept of White-Collar Crime. Under the "white collar crime" we mean a set of illegal actions prohibited under the punishment of criminal law, which entail the occurrence of adverse consequences not only for the organization itself but also for third parties. In particular, we are talking about such examples as:
Fraudulent business model. The intentional creation of the intentional organization of business processes of a business in such a way as to benefit from fraudulent means, deceiving its employees, customers, buyers, suppliers, the state, or illegally using the property and assets of third parties (including information, personal data). In this case, the entire business itself, as an object for the implementation of a criminal plan, is an already formed organized criminal group with a certain hierarchy, rules of conduct, distributed roles, and even its own slang for communication. The simplest example is the game of thimbles [one of the standard petty fraudulent street games in Russia]. In the white-collar crime model, this is the same game of thimbles, just a very big one.
Money laundering. In a situation where a big business plays the role of laundry and smuggles money, the crime of "white collars" is committed at the same time by absolutely the entire management of the organization that participates in its management within the framework of the legal and organizational management structure, as well as the personnel involved in the execution of operations, which together form a crime. As in the first case, all persons involved in the management of the organization - shareholders, the board of directors, the board, lower-level managers, and ordinary personnel - should be held criminally liable.
Corruption. White-collar crime has traditionally been understood by researchers as crime prevalent in private companies. We categorically disagree with this interpretation, and we believe that the definition of a "white collar" crime should include all crimes committed by engineering and technical personnel and managers, regardless of the form of ownership of the organization, and whether the leaders of the organization are, among other things, shareholders of the company, heads of state organizations, employees of state institutions. Thus, the corruption link between private companies and the public sector, as well as linear corruption relations between public sector companies (which generally fell out of sight of both researchers and investigators, except for a terrible case with a basket of sausage, while Ulyukaev’s exploits in the bank VTB, in particular, went unpunished) is also an area for study within the framework of such a phenomenon as white-collar crime.
Tax evasion. In any organization where tax evasion reaches such proportions that it becomes a criminal offense, the chief accountant is the last person to sit down [in Russia "to sit" means to be imprisoned in criminal law slang] in such situations. Of course, he must sit down. However, along with him, the same ones should be prosecuted - firstly, "thrifty" shareholders of companies with problems with a calculator and a head, who, for unknown reasons, believed that it was cheaper to maintain the "skirt" [broad legal structure] of offshore companies than to pay VAT. Secondly, the heads of companies that put tax evasion on stream - introduced special programs for "VAT adjustment," for lowering the tax base for income tax (as was done, for example, in Euroset, Eldorado, Sibirsky Bereg, Alfa-Bank, Tinkoff, MKB), created a dual document management system, a special system of "secret approvals" with the help of special signs and children's stamps. Thirdly, of course, the employees who participated in this process with pleasure.
In matters of "white-collar" crime, it is of particular importance to bring to justice all accomplices in crimes, in particular - in these 4 typical cases. Usually the director and the chief accountant, or only the chief accountant, are prosecuted. This is reminiscent of the vicious practice of the Nuremberg trials - when 0.00002% of the Nazis were held accountable for the millions of those killed, and the top of the 3rd Reich, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, escaped any punishment at all. All other "cogs" were released from liability by the courts due to lack of evidence of guilt. That is, the fields of corpses were not enough. Now the practice of prosecuting white-collar crimes is identical to the vicious practice of prosecuting war crimes and genocide of the 3rd Reich. Along with the redefinition of white-collar crimes, there must be a redefinition not only in the criminal process and legal proceedings, but also in the brains of law enforcement officers and judges.
To be continued. Subscribe to a series of publications on this topic using the hashtags #2Rwhitecollarcrime #ultraantifraudwhitecollarcrime #driveratsout #businessdisinfection.
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