Rider, Barry --- "Introduction" [2015] ELECD 1376; in Rider, Barry (ed), "Research Handbook on International Financial Crime" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) xxxvii

Book Title: Research Handbook on International Financial Crime

Editor(s): Rider, Barry

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783475780

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Rider, Barry

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Introduction
Barry Rider



The academy has been slow, if not reluctant, to recognise the importance of studies
related to the commission and consequences of economically motivated crime. Of
course, the significance of misconduct in regard to economic activity has long been
recognised by those concerned with promoting prosperity and stability. Some of the
earliest legal systems have rules that relate to conduct which today we might
characterise as economic crime. Bribery is often condemned in early legal systems, and
as soon as markets develop we find examples of laws designed to ensure the proper
flow of goods to market and that other manipulative practices are forbidden. However,
there has always been a potentially difficult relationship between the laudable wish to
see business and trade expand, driven by the desire for profit, and the distaste of
unmitigated greed. It has taken societies a very long time to resolve the boundaries of
what is acceptable and what might damage the longer term public interest. We also find
a tension in some cases between the proper role of law in curbing conduct which is
regarded as so damaging that the public interest justifies the use of the mechanisms of
the criminal justice system and other situations, where there is proper concern for the
expectations of those engaged in the relevant transaction. A good example of this is the
attitude of English law to what we would today have little difficulty in stigmatising as
the abuse of insider dealing.
The use for one's ...