ABSTRACT
The purpose of this article is to describe and analyse some of the changes and continuities in the regulation of financial fraud in London, whose cost in money terms—excluding both unrecorded and tax fraud—as recorded by the two London police forces, has risen by 150 per cent since 1970 and in 1989 amounted to some £4 billion at risk. However, as other contributors to this book have emphasised, financial services activity in London (and the UK generally) is just part of a global phenomenon. During the 1980s, major banking and securities frauds hit Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. Corruption scandals have arisen in all countries: developed and underdeveloped; capitalist and communist (before Eastern Europe moved towards a market economy).
