Samenvatting

In this article the authors use empirical data from the Dutch Organised Crime Monitor to give empirical insight into the investments of organised crime offenders in legal economy. Using a dataset of 1,196 individual investments, they look into what kind of assets offenders purchase and where these assets are located. The authors use the empirical results to assess the tenability of different theoretical perspectives and assumptions that are present in the literature on money laundering and organised crime: the standard economic approach, the criminal infiltration approach and the social opportunity structure. The results of this study show that offenders predominantly invest in their home country and that their investments consist of tangible, familiar assets such as residences and other real estate and companies from well-known sectors. Investments such as bonds as well as stocks in companies in which offenders are not personally involved, were only found in a small number of cases. To put it differently: offenders usually stay close to home with their investments. Based on these results, the concept of social opportunity structure seems to be best suited to understand offenders’ investment choices.