All publications

3 Feb 2026

The fugazi papers, or on the importance of false invoicing for organised crime and the money laundering market

An analysis of drivers, mechanisms and actors

29 Dec 2025

A data-driven approach to measure money laundering risk and its relationship with corruption

The issue of how the money laundering (ML) risk of countries is measured is not a merely technical problem. It has a strong impact on countries’ development, in particular of the Global South. First, because official anti-money laundering (AML) blacklists and grey lists, which frequently include developing and small countries,…

3 Dec 2025

Major Public Projects and Integrity: The M4 Experience

In collaboration between Transcrime, Crime&tech and M4

14 Nov 2025

On the enforcement of targeted sanctions

Estimating the control of sanctioned Russian entities over European companies and proposing a methodology to detect sanction circumvention

30 Jul 2025

Ville lumière Ou Ville obscure? Assessing the secrecy of firms owning real estate properties in Paris

The real estate market, especially the luxury one, has long been a target for money laundering purposes. A frequent scheme involves the misuse of legitimate– often offshore– firms to conceal the ownership of properties and the illicit origin of the invested funds. Despite the abundance of investigations, empirical research in…

19 May 2025

Criminal infiltration in the economy

This volume collects the proceedings of the conference “The Dynamics of Criminal Infiltration into the Economy: Risks and Remedies” (March 21, 2024, Milan – more information available here), organised by Transcrime – Joint Research Centre on Innovation and Crime of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore –…

14 Apr 2025

High-level Corruption: an Analysis of Schemes, Costs and Policy Recommendations

FALCON Project Policy Brief

3 Feb 2025

Bricks or cooks? Geographical and social determinants of the investment choices of mafia-type organized crime

This article studies legitimate businesses confiscated from mafia groups in Italy to assess whether mafia investment patterns across industries depend on the characteristics of the geographical environment in which infiltrated firms operate. We carry out a spatial regression analysis of more than 1700 firms, with special emphasis on restaurants/hotels and…

19 Dec 2024

Terrorist Financing: Traditional vs. Emerging Financial Technologies

This study examines the use of traditional systems and emerging financial technologies for terrorist financing based on a dataset comprising 121 cases around the world. While there are speculations that terrorists are largely adopting emerging FinTechs like cryptocurrencies, our exploratory findings indicate that only 7 percent of cases involve such…

4 Nov 2024

New forms of, and risk factors for, high-level transnational corruption schemes

KLEPTOTRACE Handbook