In developed countries the economic and financial world has a poor understanding of the criminal dimensions of risk, which is a dangerous situation in a chaotic world. It is a fact in our changing world that both economics and organised crime have taken a central place, each in its own way. Economic and financial issues dominate national life: globalisation and economic warfare are everyday preoccupations. Organised crime has evolved into a major social phenomenon (mafias, gangs, cartels and so forth). This is why we need to look again at the ancient and familiar relationship between the economy and organised crime: crime which is economically motivated.

Any observer feels intuitively the extent to which major economic and financial fluxes are now the targets of multiple criminal attacks: the fraudulent bankruptcies of Enron and WorldCom, the explosion of counterfeiting, money laundering, and so on. However, organised crime is almost always ignored when considering major financial and economic crises.⁽¹⁾ There are many examples of this:

• The Moral Report on Money in the World, 2008. Published by the Association d’économie financière, this work (particularly in its first section ‘The financial crisis’ does not say a word about the risk from criminals.
• The 13^th European Forum on Intellectual Property (15-16 April 2008, Paris), held under the auspices of the Union des Fabricants et de l’Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI). For two days all aspects of intellectual property (except one) were examined, in the presence of many French and European ministers and senior civil servants, without once touching on the issue of the actual counterfeiters. Who are they, and how are they organised? Essential questions were not asked. Debate centred on economic and legal aspects, but questions relevant to the identification of those responsible for counterfeiting (in other words, organised crime) were left unasked. It is as if in a seminar devoted to sport, any reference to sport itself is ignored in favour of a general discussion on spectators or TV broadcast rights!
• Report on the Financial Crisis, September 2008, a mission given by the President of the Republic to René Ricol. This 160-page report, whose objective was to cast light on the financial crisis of 2007-08 (mortgage lending and raw materials) had only one timid mention of some 20 lines on criminal fraud.⁽²⁾
• Risques, Les cahiers de l’assurance & la Revue d’économie financière, June 2008 (nos. 73-74) devoted an entire issue of more than 450 pages to the theme of ‘Financial Crisis: analysis and proposals’ without once mentioning the criminal dimension.
• The subprime crisis, Report no. 78 of the Conseil d’analyse économique (CAE), September 2008 by Patrick Artus, Jean-Paul Betbèze, Christian de Boissieu ad Gunther Capelle-Blancard⁽³⁾ ,did not contain one single word about criminal activity.