LL4BL      Half Unit
Financial Crime

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Availability

This course focuses on financial crime and explores current perspectives and developments in its prevention, investigation, prosecution and disposal. The course is bracketed by introductory and concluding sessions exploring key concepts and principles including the nature and extent of financial crime, typologies of economically acquisitive misconduct, the relationship between serious/organised crime and financial crime, and its social, economic and developmental impact. We also consider the perceived ambivalence to the prosecution of financial crime cases, limitations on public authorities to fight it, and other methods of dealing with financial crime such as civil unexplained wealth orders. The course considers the emergence of international standards on financial crime – in particular anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regimes as a principal response to financial crime. In addition, we consider legal and regulatory frameworks pertaining to corruption and bribery, fraud, financial market abuse such as insider dealing, tax crimes and suspect wealth. We consider financial crime in both predicate and facilitative contexts. We explore financial integrity and transparency initiatives, as well as the case for illicit enrichment offences and use of special investigative tools pertaining to unexplained wealth. The course addresses the compatibility of certain financial crime initiatives, such as beneficial ownership transparency, with fundamental protections on due process, rights to privacy, property and data protection as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights or other international instruments. The course also considers the ‘fight’ against financial crime and upon whom this burden falls, and explores key players and processes – including the role of international and supra-national organisations and the professions. The appropriateness of international economic crime laws and standards will be considered as well as the challenges faced by jurisdictions in their implementation. The course also introduces the role played by international and offshore financial centres. We discuss alternatives to prosecution, as well as principles of sentencing, punishment and other methods of case disposal, and criminological theories pertinent to the study of financial crime including theories of deterrence.

There is no overlap between this course and the course on Corporate Crime in the Autumn (first) Term. Corporate Crime is not a pre-requisite for this course.

1 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
10 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course will be taught in the Winter Term, in the form of a one-hour lecture in person followed by a one-hour seminar class.

One 1,500 word essay.

Reading is prescribed for each lecture and seminar. There are no core textbooks available for the course; however, all the reading material is available from resources easily accessible through LSE Moodle, LSE Electronic Library and the internet. Preliminary reading is not required but for an understanding of the areas covered in the course students may read Rider (ed) Research Handbook on International Financial Crime, 2015, Elgar; Green: Lying, Cheating and Stealing: A Moral Theory of White Collar Crime, 2007, Oxford University Press; Alldridge: Money Laundering Law: Forfeiture, Confiscation, Civil Recovery, Criminal Laundering and Taxation of the Proceeds of Crime, 2003, Hart Publishing;  Ryder: Financial Crime in the 21st Century, Law and Policy, 2012, Edward Elgar; Sharman & Chaikin: Money Laundering and Corruption: A Symbiotic Relationship, 2009, Palgrave; and Thomas-James: Offshore Financial Centres and the Law, 2021, Routledge.

Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period