| The Finnish Government made a decision in principle to fight white-collar crime and the black economy in February 1996. Alongside with the improvements in relations between officials, some of the funds committed to this 'fight' have been invested in scientific research. The particular research developments that I'm describing started in 1995, when a vast mass of empirical material consisting of information on 26,000 companies was used in a project about the misuse of state subsidies in Finland. The methods and findings of the study were later used in the development of a computer-based follow-up system for the Finnish tax authorities. During this last year, the empirical research materials of two other studies have been put to use in testing intelligence data analysis methods in the segmentation of companies for use as a comparative tool in the display structure Self-Organizing Map (SOM) of companies. In March 2000, the idea has been accepted as a joint project by a credit information agency (material provider), and the authorities combatting white-collar crime (end users) as well as two researchers (developers). The research undertaken in this project was conducted in the University of Turku and the technical research concerning SOM is being provided by Helsinki University of Technology. The first stage of the project is the further testing of different variables in collaboration with the credit information agency. After testing for appropriate variables, the second stage of the implementation of the system for use in white-collar crime intelligence will begin. |
Updated 05/20/2006