Frauds and Financial Crimes : Trends, Strategic Responses and Implementation Issues in England and Wales

This edited volume provides a contemporary overview of major issues and control strategies associated with fraud and financial crime, including prevention, public ethics, compliance mechanisms, and law enforcement in England and Wales.

The UK – and in particular, England & Wales - has had a number of public strategies and plans to address fraud and financial crime, beginning (in this edited volume) with the 2008 National Fraud Strategy and now including, most recently, the 2020 Local Government Fraud and Corruption strategy, the 2019 Economic Crime Plan and National Fraud Policing Strategy, the 2018 Serious and Organised Crime Strategy, and the 2017 Anti-Corruption Plan. All, together with a number of past, existing, reconfigured and new institutions and procedures, reflect a continuing collective response to emerging issues and themes in fraud and financial crime.

Frauds and Financial Crimes: Trends, Strategic Responses and Implementation Issues in England and Wales contributes insights about the continuing interplay of strategic responses, priorities and implementation in an era of budget reductions, competing local and national agendas and a continuing absence of joined-up oversight and ownership. Drawing on both academic and practitioner experts, the book seeks to explore a range of important themes, including: the gaps between strategic intentions and practice on the ground; different approaches to the same issue; labelling of crimes as ‘organised’ and/or ‘economic’; collaborative public-private and inter-agency approaches and problem ownership; the role of prevention; and the translation of experience upwards and policy downwards in development and implementation. In doing so, it seeks to inform more effective strategic responses to fraud and financial crime.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Public Money and Management.

Alan Doig is currently Visiting Professor, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. He developed the first MA in Fraud Management for UK police, public and private sector investigators and investigation managers. He is author and editor of practitioner and academic reports, articles and books on fraud, financial crime and public ethics; the books include Corruption and Misconduct in Contemporary British Politics, Fraud, and Fraud: The Counter-fraud Practitioners Handbook. He was the Council of Europe’s full-time Resident Advisor in Turkey for a public ethics and prevention of corruption project and a resident UNODC UNCAC mentor to Thailand. Since then he has worked for various organisations, including the World Bank, OECD, Council of Europe, and the UNDP.

Michael Levi is Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University. He has an international reputation in academic and policy-oriented research on money laundering, corruption, cybercrimes, transnational organised crime and white-collar crimes. He has been advisor to the European Commission and Parliament, Europol, Council of Europe, UN and World Economic Forum, and UK government departments. His books include The Phantom Capitalists and Regulating Fraud. He has received major research prizes from the British and American Societies of Criminology, the first lifetime Tackling Economic Crime Award in the UK in 2019, and the Al Thani Rule of Law Committee/UNODC Corruption Research and Education prize in 2020.