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Where did all the money go?

English summary of Brå report 2007:4

Money from drug crime constitutes an unknown, but often discussed, fraction of the criminal money in circulation within the economy.

About the publication

Author
Johanna Skinnari, Daniel Vesterhav, Lars Korsell
Other information
© Brottsförebyggande rådet 2008
urn:nbn:se:bra-322
Report 2007:4

About the study

Since money, or rather financial gain, is one of the most important motives for distributors and financiers in the drug market (Brå 2005:11; Brå 2007:7), there is an urgent need to improve our knowledge of the economics of drug crime in order to design more effective crime fighting and crime prevention strategies.

The study presented in this paper is explorative, and rather than focusing on the amount of money involved, it investigates how this money is handled and where it goes. Even though income from crime and the way the proceeds of crime are handled constitute a prioritized area for the judicial system – both in Sweden and in other countries – knowledge on the structure of the criminal economy and how this economy functions remains limited (cf. van Duyne et al., 2003; Naylor, 2004). Many people speak of the importance of “following the money” and of focusing on the core of the criminal enterprise, i.e. the proceeds of crime, but a surprisingly small amount of systematic research has yet been conducted in this area.

The aims of the current study are thus to improve upon the existing knowledge of the financial management of drug crime in Sweden, and on the basis of this knowledge to identify crime prevention and crime fighting strategies and methods. The following section presents the methods employed to investigate the way this unseen money is handled.