The problem of, and with, financial crime

Financial crime is a term that is widely used, but it is a label or category that is bedevilled by definitional uncertainty and this uncertainty impacts upon how it is perceived and acted upon by law enforcement and other regulatory actors. This is perhaps not surprising and echoes many of the difficulties that have plagued efforts to counter white-collar crime. This article considers the definitional and other ambiguities that have permeated debates about both white-collar and financial crime. The analysis draws on a short survey which asked law enforcement and other regulatory actors in Australia and the UK whose responsibilities included countering behaviours that could be viewed as financial crime, what operational definitions of financial crime they employed in the course of their work. Results indicate that definitional uncertainty ensures that there are numerous understandings of what constitutes financial crime and no immediate prospect of a universal legal definition. However, there are some interesting classification developments for financial crime emerging from the business sciences literature and interdisciplinary approaches would seem to offer the most promise for categorising the suite of evolving behaviours that comprise financial crime.