Irish Examiner view: Time to take on fraud and corruption

The Government’s decision to implement the recommendations of the Hamilton review group that give greater powers and resources to investigate corruption, fraud, and economic crime, is welcome.

Successive Irish governments have been slow to deal with aspects of white-collar crime. File picture: Pexels

When the ordinary, law-abiding citizen thinks of criminals and criminality, what often comes to mind is a violent individual, gangsters, armed bank robbers, and drug dealers.

In fact, in money terms alone, most wrongdoing consists of so-called white-collar crime, and includes corruption, insurance and other fraud, bribery, tax evasion, nepotism, and the manipulation of financial markets.