ABSTRACT
Two preliminary remarks are needed: by economic crime, I mean here not the ‘ordinary’ petty criminality (theft, kiosk-racketeering, street fraud, etc), but activities of macro-economic proportions that are, although technically illegal, so massive and impersonal, that they have become part of ‘law in action’ in post-Communist countries. Governments blame the failure of their economic policies on such activities, but do not do anything serious to fight them. Examples of these crimes are: fraudulent, unfair, covered-up privatisation schemes; investment pyramids; legally unfounded export-import controls; or the use of banned transaction techniques such as negotiations versus tenders.3
