Investment of Criminal Proceeds into the Legitimate Economy: An Analysis of Italian and Russian Organised Crime in the UK Real Estate Market

Several studies and non-academic reports suggest that the UK remains a hot spot for investments of Italian and Russian organised crime groups in the real estate sector with high concentration in the London metropolitan area. Italian and Russian criminal organisations have notable tendencies to be highly flexible, structurally organised and pose a serious threat to the economic and financial systems in all European countries, including the UK real estate market. Despite the attention that the relationships between investments, real estate and Italian and Russian organised crime in the UK have generated over the years, however the literature suffers from a paucity of studies and limited data focused on this topic. Henceforth, this presentation is relevant within criminological and legal scholarship as it addresses the existing gap in the literature in terms of the infiltration of organised crime in this legitimate sector. The research adopts an entrepreneurial approach (Passas, 1999) in order to investigate Italian and Russian organised crime mobility abroad and their infiltration in the UK real estate sector. By using an interpretivist approach, the semi-structured interviews conducted with different practitioners and academics in the UK and Italy have generated some interesting findings in terms of Italian and Russian organised crime’s migration process abroad, their modus operandi and the formation of criminal opportunities in the UK real estate sector generated through legislative and socio-economic discrepancies within this specific socio-economic context. Lastly, this presentation broadens our understanding of money laundering schemes and crime facilitators leading to theory building in this area.