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Crime, Law & Social Change (2005) 44: 133151
DOI: 10.1007/s10611-006-9009-5 C Springer 2006The parliamentary enquiry on fraud in the Dutch construction
industry collusion as concept between corruption and
state-corporate crimeGRAT VAN DEN HEUVELFaculty of Law, University of Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht,
The Netherlands(e-mail: [email protected])Abstract. In December 2002 the final report of the Royal Commission concerning Irregularities in the Dutch Construction Industry was published. The broadcasting of the public
hearings in the months before was breaking news. It proved the whole sector participated in
illegal practices, ranging from fraud, unjustified subsidies and license issuance to real bribery
and money or favours to individual politicians or higher-ranking public servants; from undercutting the market, monopolisation and forcing up prices, to selective control by partial
inspectorates. In his article the author, an advisor to the Commission, summarises the mayor
types of irregularities the report reveals with special interest in the network dimension they
had in common. The Commission spoke about collusion as the key problem. Collusion can
be described as secret agreement for a fraudulent or deceitful purpose, especially to defeat the
course of law. Theoretically this concept can have many faces. In this parliamentary enquiry
it was illustrated in three ways: as anti-trust illegalities, as a kind of governmental crime, and
as kind of corruption. The report showed a long-lasting structural interrelation between these
three types with a special role for the twining between collusion and corruption. Corruption
research often mentions collusion as a cause, condition or explanation of corruption. But rarely
is that argument illustrated in detail. This article seeks to do so. Especially when corruption is
hard to grasp in modern society, a solution could be to take collusion as a network offence
more seriously. The collusion subsystems revealed hereare relatively stable networks, invulnerable to individualised anti-corruption legislation. The author pleads for stricter rules governing
state-corporate interrelationships, more severe control on network abuses, and the introduction
of minimum standards for public contracting as proposed by Transparency International.IntroductionEarly in November 2001, in a television documentary entitled Sjoemelen
met miljoenen (Fiddling by the Millions), a Dutch public broadcasting
corporation paid attention to double-entry bookkeeping, slush funds, forcedup prices, illegal prior consultation, cartelisation, bribery and fraud in the
construction industry. It was also alleged that corrupt...