Financial crime is a narrative which helps us convince ourselves that financial structures are sustained by benign forces, always struggling against bad actors. In reality, crimes enacted through financial means only reflect a deeper foundation that is neither neutral nor apolitical. It is founded on the Eurocentric worldview that pursues an exclusionary model of progress and development through exploitation and political, racial, epistemological, and economic violence. Demanding financial structures to address crime would be tantamount to asking a racketeering gang to police themselves.
Contrary to popular belief, fin-crime is not a bug but a deliberate feature. In this manner, ostensibly antagonist nations, state and non-state actors, and all sorts of outlaws establish communication channels with each other. And since the global financial system’s liquidity relies on said networks, they are routinely integrated in an off-the-books manner.
We’re led to believe that most fin-crimes occur on the outskirts of the economy. When mid-tier banks face mild penalty fees or corrupt public servants receive short sentences in low-security jails, the system supposedly corrects itself, becoming more efficient. But what if fin-crime indeed mirrors the same competitive practices to attract capital and maximise profits as multinational corporations and governments do?
Feeble attempts to tighten the reins of highly irrational and skewed economic networks, which have become so opaque as they depend on pervasive financial illiteracy to disempower and dissuade people from seeking change, go hand in hand with the minimal efforts of national jurisdictions towards transnational economic strategies that support subjugation and abuse.
The same infrastructures through which the spoils of environmental exploitation, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, corruption, and plain theft occur are the same facilitating corporate tax evasion, financial safe havens, servicing unpayable debt, the extraction of underpaid or unpaid labour in the global South, and the depredation of bodies, energies, and nature on a global scale. Financial criminality becomes a question of perception. This calls into question the origins of disciplinary standards and who ultimately benefits from them.
One can be sometimes persuaded by the occasional punishment of financial crimes as a catalyst for change once the system is refined and recalibrated. But in truth, no major change ensues, and it only reinforces the very structures it ostensibly seeks to clean up. There is an abstract violence behind fin-crime as it serves as a mere façade behind which intricate legal and economic strategies shape and perpetuate asymmetrical power relations, fighting a few select crimes, while the bulk which remain contribute to making the global financial system operational.
As long as an overly simplistic conception of financial crime persists, it will be difficult to dismiss its legal penalties as purely performative, serving to ultimately suppress the need to contest a system calibrated to perpetuate inequality and exploitation. Rather than an aberration, fin-crime becomes a gauge to measure if current economic frameworks are able to foster genuine change, or simply maintain a narrative that gives leeway to a privileged few at the expense of the vast majority.
Financial crime is a narrative which helps us convince ourselves that financial structures are sustained by benign forces, always struggling against bad actors. In reality, crimes enacted through financial means only reflect a deeper foundation that is neither neutral nor apolitical. It is founded on the Eurocentric worldview that pursues an exclusionary model of progress and development through exploitation and political, racial, epistemological, and economic violence. Demanding financial structures to address crime would be tantamount to asking a racketeering gang to police themselves.
Contrary to popular belief, fin-crime is not a bug but a deliberate feature. In this manner, ostensibly antagonist nations, state and non-state actors, and all sorts of outlaws establish communication channels with each other. And since the global financial system’s liquidity relies on said networks, they are routinely integrated in an off-the-books manner.
We’re led to believe that most fin-crimes occur on the outskirts of the economy. When mid-tier banks face mild penalty fees or corrupt public servants receive short sentences in low-security jails, the system supposedly corrects itself, becoming more efficient. But what if fin-crime indeed mirrors the same competitive practices to attract capital and maximise profits as multinational corporations and governments do?
Feeble attempts to tighten the reins of highly irrational and skewed economic networks, which have become so opaque as they depend on pervasive financial illiteracy to disempower and dissuade people from seeking change, go hand in hand with the minimal efforts of national jurisdictions towards transnational economic strategies that support subjugation and abuse.
The same infrastructures through which the spoils of environmental exploitation, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, corruption, and plain theft occur are the same facilitating corporate tax evasion, financial safe havens, servicing unpayable debt, the extraction of underpaid or unpaid labour in the global South, and the depredation of bodies, energies, and nature on a global scale. Financial criminality becomes a question of perception. This calls into question the origins of disciplinary standards and who ultimately benefits from them.
One can be sometimes persuaded by the occasional punishment of financial crimes as a catalyst for change once the system is refined and recalibrated. But in truth, no major change ensues, and it only reinforces the very structures it ostensibly seeks to clean up. There is an abstract violence behind fin-crime as it serves as a mere façade behind which intricate legal and economic strategies shape and perpetuate asymmetrical power relations, fighting a few select crimes, while the bulk which remain contribute to making the global financial system operational.
As long as an overly simplistic conception of financial crime persists, it will be difficult to dismiss its legal penalties as purely performative, serving to ultimately suppress the need to contest a system calibrated to perpetuate inequality and exploitation. Rather than an aberration, fin-crime becomes a gauge to measure if current economic frameworks are able to foster genuine change, or simply maintain a narrative that gives leeway to a privileged few at the expense of the vast majority.