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Professionals as enablers of economic crime – more effective prevention of the phenomenon

Using one’s skills to enable tax offences and other economic crimes is known as professional enabling. For example, it involves criminal actors exploiting legal business structures in their activities. Cases have also been detected in tax and criminal investigations in Finland. The ability of public authorities to identify these practices is continuously improving.

The role of a professional enabler may vary from passive enabling to serving as an active helper and everything in between. However, the cases usually involve trained professionals who provide advice on ways to evade or avoid taxes, for example by concealing income, disguising the true ownership of funds, often through complex structures, or using fake transactions, documents or receipts. Different buffer arrangements are also examples of professional enabling, even though they do not require skills obtained through advanced training.

Competition between companies is growing more intense, making it challenging for honest businesses to thrive in a market where not everyone plays by the same rules. The funds are lost from the financing of welfare society, which includes education or healthcare. Through their tax crimes and other offences, criminals seek financial gains that are often siphoned from Finland to foreign states.

Examples of professional enablers include

  • tax specialists, lawyers, accountants or financial advisers.
  • business start-up or financial administration service providers and shelf company providers, notaries, foundations or distressed asset buyers, i.e. parties acquiring a company on the verge of bankruptcy for pay
  • banks and financial institutions when financing activities
  • forwarders
  • organisers of illegal entry
  • cyber fraud enablers

Watch videos of different situations involving professional enabling

Link to Youtube video

Link to Youtube video

Link to Youtube video

An international phenomenon subject to supervision

The efforts to combat tax fraud and economic crime have involved significant investments in the identification and prevention of the activities of professional enablers after the OECD published its report on the professionals who enable tax and white-collar crimes. The report contains a wide range of recommendations for national implementation and for enhancing cross-border cooperation in investigations.

Targeting supervisory measures directly at parties that provide assistance in economic crimes would be a cost-effective way to combat tax and economic crimes. For instance, the measures would make it more difficult to create complex tax fraud structures and prevent white-collar crime.

The development of operative exchange of information is important in cooperation between the authorities and private sector actors. For example, there are good examples of cross-border exchange of official information to intervene in the phenomenon in the so-called J5 countries, namely the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands. This has also made it possible to warn private sector actors about the detected harmful phenomena.

The ability to identify the competence applied in enabling economic crime is constantly improving

Intervening with professional enablers will change the strategic focus of the fight against economic crime: resources will be allocated to an earlier stage of economic crime. The creation of moments opportune for economic crime can be effectively prevented:

  • by raising awareness
  • by developing due diligence procedures and
  • by increasing the risk of being caught.

Due to the wide spectrum of professional enablers, intervention in the phenomenon requires a wide range of means. Professional enabling has not been generally criminalised in different countries. Meanwhile, provisions have been laid down to criminalise issues such as providing assistance for tax fraud or complicity in an offence. In some countries, administrative sanctions have been introduced in the investigation of tax and economic crimes. In addition, convictions may be more pronounced if committing the crime involves high professional expertise.

Combating the phenomenon requires cooperation

Official supervision is investing more in the identification of and intervention in the phenomenon. Cooperation with other supervisory bodies and the private sector is important. Self-monitoring methods used by companies and their interest groups play a key role in intervening in professional enabler activities. Cooperation with lawyer organisations, including at the student level, has been found useful. The public authorities can help organisations improve their self-monitoring, especially from an ethical perspective: which activities are and are not acceptable. The organisations may also impose more concrete and even more severe penalties of their own, such as cancelling licences or restricting activities.

There are already good examples of cooperation with public authorities and private sector actors in preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism and in the enforcement of sanctions. However, the cooperation should be further developed to address professional enabling and economic crime more comprehensively. At the same time, public authorities should also further enhance their due diligence practices related to their customers and different intervention methods, including administrative ones.

Page last updated 1/24/2025