Michele Riccardi

Catholic University of the Sacred Heart - Transcrime

Two images dominate discussion of money laundering. Investigative journalists and politicians stress the variety and sophistication of methods that have been used to launder money of corrupt officials and white collar offenders. The research literature, largely dependent on criminal cases, emphasizes how unsophisticated and routine are the launderi...

Despite the wide reach of anti-money laundering legislation worldwide and increasing media attention, fostered by journalistic leaks such as Panama Papers, empirical knowledge on how criminals launder their illicit proceeds is still scarce. The few available empirical studies show that money laundering (ML) schemes are often less sophisticated than...

The COVID-19 pandemic has created new opportunities for organized criminal groups and confronted them with new challenges. Analysis of how these groups have reacted to the pandemic yields better understanding of how they work and enables the devising of more effective counter-strategies. To this end, we identified illustrative cases regarding the p...

This article investigates the patterns of business ownership in Europe, using a unique dataset on the nationality of 28.7 million shareholders of companies registered in 41 European countries. By means of an exploratory multivariate analysis, it tests whether ownership links between different countries are driven exclusively by social and macroecon...

Most of previous research in the field focused on shrinkage (or shortage) as a proxy measure of retail crime (for a definition, see below). According to these studies, measuring shrinkage across firms, sectors and countries provides a measure of the level of retail crime across the same firms, sectors and countries. The starting point of this repo...

Most money laundering (ML) risk assessments carried out in Europe and abroad are qualitative analyses at national aggregate level. To complement current knowledge, this paper – based on the findings of the European co-funded project IARM (Identifying and Assessing the Risk of Money laundering in Europe -www.transcrime.it/iarm) – proposes a new quan...

Final report of EU co-funded MORE project. MORE aimed to analyse, model and map the risk factors of serious and organised crime (SOC) infiltration in legitimate European businesses. It focused on risk factors at two levels: • Macro level, i.e., across countries,regions and business sectors; • Micro level, i.e., at the firm level, in terms of owners...

Theft of medicines is emerging as the new frontier of pharmaceutical crime and of organised retail crime. It is attractive to criminals due to the high profits and the relatively low risk, and it is facilitated by many asymmetries of the legal market. Using data retrieved from open sources and institutional reports, this chapter focuses on the thef...

Despite the increasing use of electronic payments, cash still plays a crucial role in most criminal and terrorist financing activities. This chapter provides a review of the numerous facets of the relationship between cash and (anti) money laundering. It shows how cash is spread in the criminal economy—but also in the legitimate one. It discusses w...

With the introduction of the new European anti-money laundering directive, all EU countries have to carry out an assessment of the money laundering (ML) risks in their territories. Italy, as well, published at the end of 2014 the first assessment of ML risk at the national level, currently under update. This paper-based on the findings of European...

The final report of project IARM presents an exploratory methodology for assessing the risk of money laundering (ML). In particular, it develops a composite indicator of money laundering risk at geographic area level and at business sector level. The methodology is tested in three pilot countries (Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). The...

The aim of this study is to provide a picture of security in the retail sector in Italy. In particular, the main purpose is to analyse losses and shrinkage arising from theft, robbery and other crimes, to identify differences among regions and sectors and to provide an overview of the security solutions adopted by retailers.

The infiltration of organised crime in the legitimate economy has emerged as a transnational phenomenon. This book constitutes an unprecedented study of the involvement of criminal groups in the legitimate economy and their infiltration in legal businesses, and is the first to bridge the research gap between money laundering and organised crime. It...

This chapter discusses the methodological challenges in defining, operationalising and measuring organised crime infiltration in legal businesses. It first reviews existing definitions and measures of organised crime; it then focuses on infiltration, outlining the differences with respect to the concepts of organised crime investments and money lau...

The infiltration of organised crime in the legitimate economy has emerged as a transnational phenomenon. This book constitutes an unprecedented study of the involvement of criminal groups in the legitimate economy and their infiltration in legal businesses, and is the first to bridge the research gap between money laundering and organised crime. It...

This research is an exploratory study on the infiltration of organised crime groups (OCGs) in legal businesses. Infiltration occurs in every case in which a natural person belonging to a criminal organisation or acting on its behalf, or an already infiltrated legal person, invests financial and/or human resources to participate in the decision-maki...

Along with counterfeiting, theft of medicines is emerging as the new frontier of pharmaceutical crime. In Italy between 2006 and 2013 one hospital out of ten has registered thefts of pharmaceuticals, suffering, on average, an economic loss of about 330 thousands EUR for each episode. This report represents the first study on this booming but almost...

The investment of criminals in companies has been receiving a lot of attention from policy makers and regulators worldwide. However this topic has often been neglected by researchers and relegated as a subspecies of money laundering: businesses are in most cases seen only as layers or shell companies used for concealing illicit proceeds. Is this on...

In recent years, the EU has supported actions to develop the green economy. Among these, incentives to sustain the growth of the wind power (WP) sector were welcomed as strategic for promoting environmental sustainability. This paper argues that the enthusiasm in supporting the green economy, without a preliminary assessment for crime opportunities...