1. Introduction 1
Part One: Economic Approach 5
2. The Real Estate Sector 7
2.1. Size and volume of the real estate sector 8
2.2. The Dutch real estate market 11
2.3. The actors in the real estate market 14
2.4. Some very specific characteristics of the Dutch real estate market: mortgages and taxes 17
2.5. Speculation is an inherent characteristic of the real estate market 17
2.6. The attractiveness of real estate for money laundering 19
3. Forms of Criminal Real Estate Abuse 21
4. Research Method and Indicators 29
4.1. Research method 29
4.2. Indicators 32
5. Operationalizing the Indicators and Data Collection 47
5.1. Data sources 47
5.2. Merging the datasets 50
5.3. Indicators 51
6. Descriptive Data Analysis 63
6.1. The indicators 63
6.2. Comparison of total number of red flags 80
6.3. Comparison between houses and industry 80
7. Evaluation of the Research Method 83
7.1. Correlations 83
7.2. Distribution of red flags per object 85
Part Two: Criminological Analysis&by Luuk Ritzen and Hans Nelen 89
8. Concepts, Methods and Analysis 91
8.1. The concept of conspicuousness and the use of narrative theory 91
8.2. Top-down analysis 92
8.2.1. Top-down phase la: creating case descriptions 92
8.2.2. Top-down phase lb: preparing a data matrix 95
8.2.3. Top-down phase lc: final considerations 101
8.3. Top-down phase 2a: adding 'intelligence' 102
8.3.1. Acquiring fiscal closed source information 102
8.3.2. Acquiring judicial closed source information 102
8.3.3. Top-down phase 2b: finalizing the data matrix 103
8.4. Top-down phase 3: applying the conspicuous label 105
8.5. Bottom-up analysis: gathering 'field intelligence' 107
8.5.1. Sources 107
8.5.2. Comparing the data 109
9. Results of the Criminological Analysis 111
9.1. The selected objects 111
9.2. Results top-down phase 1 112
9.3. Results top-down phase 2 112
9.4. The conspicuous cases 114
9.4.1. Fraud cases 116
9.4.2. Drug cases 118
9.4.3. Irregularities in rent cases 122
9.4.4. Final remarks 124
9.5. Results bottom-up 125
10. Major Findings of the Criminological Analysis 127
10.1. Verifying or falsifying the stated hypotheses 127
10.2. Remarkable findings in the data 128
10.3. Remarkable findings in the top-down analysis 128
10.4. Elaborating on the conspicuous cases 129
Part Three: Statistical and Econometric Analysis 133
11. Linking the Economic and Criminological Parts 135
12. Descriptive Statistics of the Dataset 137
12.1. Frequency analysis 138
12.2. Do more red flags indicate conspicuous cases? 141
12.3. Correlation analysis 141
13. Econometric Analysis 145
13.1. Missing values 145
13.2. Limited dependent variable 146
13.3. Results 146
14. Major Findings 151
15. Suggestions for Further Research 155
16. Summary 159
References 163
Index 171