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The purpose of this paper is to analyse how terrorism financing can be assimilated with money launderning when the amounts ofmoney involved differ so markedly. Not only is the cost of financing terrorist attacks minimal compared to the huge sums often at stake in financial crimes, but also the psychological profile of terrorists, who are reclusive by nature, contrasts starkly with that of financial criminals, who are usually fully integrated members of society. When terrorism financing is equated with money laundering this represents a utilitarian approach in that it facilitates the creation of a security strategy and stifles criticism of criminogenic capitalismthat turns a blind eye to tax evasion.

The analysis is conceptual, focussing on the assimilation of terrorism financing with money laundering. There is an interview with a French magistrate, specialized in the fight against corruption and white-collar crime, and data have been collected from international organizations and scholarly articles.

The fight against money laundering and money dirtying has clearly sparked numerous controversies around evaluation, scope, criminal perpetrators and a lack of vital cooperation between administrative and judicial services.

This paper raises questions about the reasons behind the linking of money laundering and money dirtying by states and players in public international law and why the fight against money laundering is very much overshadowed by their focus on terrorist financing in dealing with the growing threat of Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS or ISIL, in the Middle East and West Africa.

The paper enables the reader to raise the question of similarities between the fight against money laundering and the fight against terrorism financing.

Financial criminals commit crimes with such disconcerting ease that economic and social stability is threatened. Armed with intangible knowledge and backed by legal, financial and accounting expertise, criminals use their intellectual weapons to carry out their activities with impunity by operating in extra-territorial spaces such as tax havens. The purpose of this paper is based on interviews with key figures in the French judiciary and also French tax officials.

A survey in the form of semi-directive interviews was conducted from March to July 2012 with auditors, judicial magistrates and a representative of a large trade union of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry. Questioning this panel of persons from different but associated horizons enabled the collection of practical, technical and professional information on how they perceive acts of financial crime in the practice of their mission.

It was possible to observe that financial crime is motive-driven and develops in specific spaces and contexts, aided by informational weapons.

By promoting both financial optimisation and tax minimisation, non-cooperative territories provide the perfect breeding ground for innovative minds to distort social norms which uphold equal tax treatment and a common effort. Financial information is the recurring theme throughout, allowing ever more cunning offenders to distort the value of words and the meaning of economic results.

The ease with which financial crimes are committed remains striking. Understanding the reasons why financial criminals appear to enjoy relative impunity requires questioning the magistrates and actors involved in the combat against financial crime. The interviews conducted with these key players show that financial crime develops and flourishes on the basis of a threefold specificity: a specific motive linked to absolute enrichment without economic foundation, diffuse and imprecise spaces where economic crimes proliferate with total impunity and an intangible weapon in the form of financial information.

The private appropriation of financial information leads to the misappropriation of public goods and its capture by private operators, thereby depriving the community of a source of knowledge and expertise.

This paper is based on interviews with key figures in the French judiciary and also French tax officials. A survey in the form of semi-directive interviews was conducted from March to July 2012 with auditors, judicial magistrates and a representative of a large trade union of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

The purpose of this paper is to point out that tax fraud, recognized as a scourge by both governments and responsible tax-payers, hits public finances hard with an inevitable knock-on effect on general welfare. Based on this observation, key players interviewed for this paper, including magistrates, a trade unionist and a high-ranking official, will attempt to provide some possible solutions to help understand why significant sections of public opinion consider this very particular form of financial crime to be legitimate, largely inspired by the notion that tax fraud and evasion are socially acceptable and even seen as a national sport in certain countries.

The survey was carried out among 20 tax officials, a trade unionist, two magistrates and a high-ranking civil servant. The interviewees were carefully chosen for their ability to provide valuable insights into the reasons behind the lenient treatment of fraudsters by a state lacking the necessary means and structures to fight this crime.

The fight against tax fraud has clearly sparked numerous controversies around evaluation, scope, criminal perpetrators and cooperation between services.

Tax fraud, an offence committed with the aim of avoiding taxation or reducing the amount of tax to be paid, ranges from low-level illegal activity, such as undeclared work to make ends meet, to more serious offences, such as value-added tax carousel fraud. All the unpaid tax resulting from such blatant flouting of the law represent a serious loss of revenue for the state and local authorities.

The fight against tax fraud is crucial in determining taxpayers’ acceptance of the contribution required for state expenditure and investment. In a country such as France, where tax fraud is almost a national sport, combating this scourge will help restore the state’s budgetary sovereignty by making it central to people’s concerns about redistributive justice, tax equality and fair access to public goods.