Assessing the Risk of Organised Crime Infiltration in Public Procurement. An Empirical Analysis of EXPO 2015 in Milan

• In Event: IASOC Presents: When Organised Crime Meets Corruption. Risk Factors of Infiltration in Procurement and Legal Businesses

Abstract

Identifying companies at high risk of criminal infiltration is a major challenge for the analysis of the presence of organised crime in the legal economy. Despite growing attention has been recently paid to this topic among both academics and practitioners, empirical analysis still needs to be enhanced. This paper offers a contribution in this regard, as a result of the EU-funded Project MORE on Serious and organised crime infiltration in legitimate businesses (www.transcrime/more). We use a set of variables related to companies’ financial performance as well as their corporate structure, industry, and geographical features to develop a single analytical model. We analyze a unique dataset of around 5,000 companies involved in EXPO 2015 in Milan and controlled by Italian authorities according to the national Antimafia code. Our model aims at testing the contribution of the variables considered to the overall capability of predicting criminal infiltration in public procurement. It offers a robust and reliable set of risk indicators that may be applied to both public and private sectors in order to assess the risk of crime infiltration in the legal economy.

Authors

• Andrea Scavo, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Marco Dugato, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Michele Riccardi, Università Cattolica - Transcrime

• Francesco Calderoni, Università Cattolica - Transcrime