Abstract
The building industry is a sector characterised by a large number of opportunities to commit economic crime. In Sweden, the level of tax avoidance in the building trade is estimated to be substantial, and the use of black market labour extensive. This article focuses on the organised use of black market labour in the building industry, which may be described as a form of both economic and organised crime. To date only a very small number of criminological studies have examined the use of black market labour in this sector of the economy. The article focuses on two of the central roles found in the context of organised, black market labour: the “fixer” and the “criminal entrepreneur”. The fixer is an individual with expertise in the methods of economic crime. The criminal entrepreneur acts first and foremost as a link between a client and the manpower required by this client. In this paper, fixers and criminal entrepreneurs are studied on the basis of data from the Swedish Register of Suspected Offenders. The analysis shows that the networks of fixers and criminal entrepreneurs overlap one another to some extent. There are nonetheless a number of differences between the two groups and also between their respective networks. The networks of the fixers are larger than those of the criminal entrepreneurs, and the individuals that comprise the fixers’ networks are suspected in connection with much larger numbers of offences. The fixers more often commit offences together with others and also have larger numbers of suspected co-offenders than the criminal entrepreneurs. On the other hand, the criminal entrepreneurs are suspected of having maintained their ties to suspected co-offenders for longer periods of time than the fixers. The fixers appear to specialise in fraud and forgery offences, whereas motoring offences, smuggling and drug offences are more common among the criminal entrepreneurs. The networks are highly male-dominated and on balance they are comprised of much older individuals than those of traditional offenders. Many of the fixers and criminal entrepreneurs are suspected of committing offences with the same co-offender for a long period of time. Further out in the networks, co-offenders are replaced more often. Tax offences are very common in both types of network, both in those parts of the network that are close to the fixers and criminal entrepreneurs, and also in more distant parts of the networks. In the more distant parts of the networks, there is also an increase in the proportion of offences that individual network members are suspected of committing. Judging from the material examined in the current study, violent offences do not appear to be very common among either fixers or criminal entrepreneurs. The networks examined are largely comprised of individuals suspected of economic offences. These individuals are linked together with one another by means of direct and indirect contacts that produce semi-legal networks of individuals with knowledge of organised black market labour.
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Notes
In the material examined in the study there were examples of fixers who were suspected of working for 40–50 building firms simultaneously.
This may be due to the fact that the criminal investigation reports include individuals against whom the degree of suspicion varies. The register of suspected offenders however only includes individuals who are suspected on at least “reasonable” grounds. Thus simply being suspected is not in itself sufficient to be recorded in the register. Another reason may be that the individuals had no personal identity number at the time of the criminal investigation but rather only a date of birth or a co-ordination number.
Since the ambition has been to obtain as much information as possible on the fixers and criminal entrepreneurs, these cases have also been included in the network analysis. The cases dating from between 1991 and 1994 are evenly distributed throughout the material as regards both the offence types and the ages of the individuals involved. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the cases missing from the data for this period do not differ systematically between the fixers and the criminal entrepreneurs. It has been estimated that the register maintained by the National Council for Crime Prevention contains approximately two-thirds of the total number of recorded offences that have been tied to a suspected offender during the period between 1991 and 1994. From 1995 onwards all such recorded offences are included in the National Council’s register.
This is described in somewhat more detail in the section entitled “Sample and data”.
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Heber, A. Networks of organised black market labour in the building trade. Trends Organ Crim 12, 122–144 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-008-9060-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-008-9060-y