The final report of Project ARIEL is now online.

Project Assessing the Risk of the Infiltration of Organized Crime in EU MSs Legitimate Economies: a Pilot Project in 5 EU Countries (ARIEL) (HOME/2012/ISEC/FP/C1/4000003801) is funded by the European Commission, DG Home Affairs, within the Prevention of and Fight against Crime (ISEC) Programme.

The project is carried out by a consortium of five partners from European universities and research centres, and coordinated by Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy). National Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and Europol are also involved in the project as end users.

The aim of the project is twofold:

• To identify the methods used by different organized crime (OC) groups to infiltrate, control, and manage legitimate businesses in 5 EU MS;
• To identify risk factors of OC infiltration for the development of a common risk-assessment model (CRAM) to detect the infiltration of legitimate businesses by criminal groups.

The project will help identify the vulnerabilities of legitimate businesses to the infiltration by OC groups. The identification of these vulnerabilities could help their understanding among Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and their translation into priorities for LEA’s action. In this way coordination and systematic exchange of information among LEA will be increased and effectiveness in the action against OC could be improved.

Project ARIEL lasts 24 months, starting from June 2013.

 

“Co-funded by the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union”