Combatting Economic Crime in West Germany - With Special Regard to Organized Forms of Economic Criminality (From Ekonomisk Brottslighet, P 19-50, 1979, Leif Johansson and Dan Magnusson, eds. - See NCJ-79655)

• NCJ Number: 79656
• Author(s): K Tiedemann
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 32 pages
• Sale Source: Brottsforebyggande Radet
• Language: English
• Country: Sweden
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This paper describes organizational and legislative measures to counter economic crime in West Germany, considers the relationship between economic criminality and organized crime, and offers recommendations for improved social control of injurious economic behavior.

Abstract

Measures for countering economic crime in West Germany include (1) specialization of police, prosecutors, and courts to deal with economic crime and (2) the enactment of legislation that places severe economic crimes in the criminal code, makes the rules of evidence more lenient in economic crimes, and focuses on recklessness or imprudence as the critical elements in severe economic crimes. In the United States, connections exist between business and corporate criminality on the one hand and organized crime on the other hand, but West Germany is largely free of such a connection. There are examples, however, of organized efforts to perpetrate fraudulent business schemes, such as unlawful advertising and distribution methods ('pyramid sales') and bankruptcy and insurance fraud. Future efforts at countering economic crime should aim at distinguishing those who do business with a premeditated criminal intent and those who commit damage in business enterprises which are not essentially unlawful. The first should be pursued under criminal sanctions while the latter should be brought into civil court. Habitual economic criminals should be liable for probation against practicing their vocation. Forty footnotes are listed.