You Should Have Read the Small Print: The European Commission's Post‐Maastricht Response to Fraud
| Pages | 107-114 |
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025639 |
| Author | W.A. Tupman |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
You Should Have Read the Small Print: The
European Commission's Post-Maastricht
Response to Fraud
W. A. Tupman
W. A. Tupman
is Director of the Centre for Police and
Criminal Justice Studies at the University
of Exeter. He has written extensively on
the development of technology in
policing,
especially in relation to
information technology and its use in
combatting organised crime.
ABSTRACT
The work of the European Commission's
unit to combat fraud, UCLAF, is taking full
advantage of information technology in its
efforts to improve the collection, collation
and detection of fraud and irregular activi-
ties in the Member States. This is the first of
two papers dealing with the work of UCLAF,
and concentrates upon bringing the nature
of the problem and the institutional and
technological background to the attention of
readers. The second paper will concentrate
upon an interview with Per Knudsen, Direc-
tor of UCLAF, in which the impact of the
new technology and future developments in
detection and prosecution will be the focus.
Fraud against the European Union is
committed by the same 'organised
crime' groups as those involved in drug-
trafficking, money-laundering, smug-
gling and perhaps even terrorism. In
Italy, for example, the Mafia gets the
blame for a high percentage of £255m
worth of fraud committed between 1984
and 1992.1
Although academics and police offi-
cers seem fated to disagree about
whether 'organised crime' exists and
how 'organised' organised crime must be
(discussions at the briefing of the Social-
ist Group of MEPs, Brussels, December
1993),
a picture is emerging of criminal
networks slimming down, specialising
and becoming more and more market
responsive. Instead of centralised,
pyramidal hierarchies, expanding into
a variety of activities, with markets
clearly defined on a territorial basis
'policed' by thugs, a more sophisticated
set of horizontal arrangements between
organised crime groups with specialist
skills,
following Sir John Harvey-Jones's
advice of 'sticking to the knitting', seeks
market opportunities to exploit.2 These
groups had begun to abolish borders
well ahead of the removal of internal
frontiers under the Single European Act
and its incorporation in the Treaty of
Maastricht.
The European Commission's response
to these moves by organised crime
groups has largely been through UCLAF
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