Abstract
Among the instances of maritime fraud, the scuttling of ships, the deliberate sinking of a ship in order to collect the insurance money, stands out. It has been suggested that marine transport is prone to infiltration by organized crime groups. These are suggestions that have never been substantiated, but they could point towards a criminogenic market-structure of the (marine) insurance industry. The Dutch marine insurance-industry has a reputation to lose. The insuring of ships requires skill, professionalism and money, but the practice of marine insurance has hardly changed since the Dutch Golden Age. Drawing upon the results of two years of fieldwork in the Dutch marine insurance industry, it will be argued that the scuttling of ships is interlinked and intertwined with the practice of marine insurance and the way the marine insurance industry is commercially and legally organized. An analysis of the opportunity-for-fraud-structure of the (Dutch) marine insurance market will be made.
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Faber, E. Shipping and scuttling: Criminogenesis in marine insurance. Crime, Law and Social Change 28, 111–135 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008292912365
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008292912365