Challenges and Trends in Enforcing Economic and Financial Crime: Criminal Law and Alternatives in Europe and the US

This chapter by Katalin Ligeti and Stanislaw Tosza provides a synthesis of the main findings of the book edited by the two authors (White Collar Crime. A Comparative Perspective, Hart Publishing, 2018). The chapter first presents the challenges in investigating and prosecuting economic and financial crime (section II). The analysis of four national systems (France, Poland, Sweden, and the US) complemented by the information provided in the transversal chapters led to the identification of four major tendencies in the field in response to these challenges (section III): the swinging of enforcement strategies between prosecuting individuals or/and corporations (section III.A); the extension of punitive sanctions and the use of compliance programmes as punishment (section III.B); the extensive use of alternatives to criminal proceedings (section III.C); and the increased role of private actors in controlling economic and financial crime (section III.D). In section 4, these responses are scrutinised from the perspective of the human rights regime.