Crime has benefited from globalisation and widespread deregulation, while the development of new technologies has been a boon for racketeers, inciting them to invent new fraudulent techniques.
Corruption is rife in sports, particularly in football, where cases of various illegal dealings are frequently splattered on the front pages of newspapers: money laundering, smoke screens and back-handers in transfer dealings of football players, embezzlement, bribery of referees, performance-enhancing drugs.
But the examples of corruption described in this book are not limited to football. Noël Pons has written a fascinating study of the basic techniques used by racketeers. He spans such varied domains as gambling, fraudulent reporting of business accounts, advertising fraud, VAT fraud, trafficking in false ID, Internet swindling, etc.
Pons reveals the extent to which these illegal activities have grown and developed. Arguing that they are not simply the work of a few smart crooks, he shows how such activities have become an integral part of the day-to-day practice of organised networks working with the mafias — with the result that the economy as a whole is under threat.
This extremely well-documented study, illustrated with many examples, describes in detail the techniques used in the most widespread forms of contemporary fraud. It offers an accurate portrayal of today’s underground economy and of its impact.

Noël Pons is a tax inspector and an official at the central French agency for the prevention of corruption (Service Central de Prévention de la Corruption, or SCPC). For many years he has had a special interest in the prevention of fraud and corruption, and in the links between organised crime and the business world. He has given many seminars on the prevention of fraud and corruption, in France and abroad.