A Japanese friend of mine, then an assistant vice-president of a Japanese bank, had experienced the first episode involving the World Trade Centre, and sent me a graphic e-mail at the time of how she made her way down the back stairs amidst all the smoke and confusion. Then she suffered redundancy and returned to Japan to retrain as a nurse and eventually intends to return to the USA. I e-mailed her to say what a blessing her redundancy had now turned out to be. Another person known to me was delayed in traffic, as was the Duchess of York going to a charity event, otherwise they might have been among the casualties. A Managerial Auditing Journal author from New York, in university accommodation close by, wrote to apologise for the delay in submitting, since he was just being able to reassemble his life, and mercifully all his students were by that time accounted for. One of our own Editorial Board members, Dr Carol Codori, was caught up in the mayhem in Washington DC. She e-mailed me:

I was to have been in the Pentagon at 11:30 am that day for a luncheon and meeting. We were released from work at 10am . . . I left my car and walked home in four hours from my office near National Airport – passing cars gridlocked for hours. Surreal. Awful. And remember, I used to pass the World Trade Centre in New York City many many days when living in Brooklyn.

White-collar crime has sometimes seemed or even been represented as the nice end of criminal activity, since it does not usually involve violence, and the perpetrators are just like the people next door. However its economic consequences can be devastating, and in the wider scheme of things it can be even more lethal than crimes of physical violence. However there is not necessarily a dichotomy since one often feeds on the other. The attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon on 11 September 2001 were accompanied by huge illegal manipulation of the money markets by those factions who perpetrated the terrorism. They predicted the likely impact on share prices of the huge damage they were aware they would create, so traded accordingly. It is also instructive that the Taliban Muslim extremist groups were also trading in arms and illegal drugs, hence adding further layers of criminality. White-collar and other types of crime tend to operate hand-in-glove and even be symbiotic. Money laundering is another illegal activity which makes the cross-walk between the ‘‘nasty’’ end of crime and the ‘‘nice’’ end.

What is clear is that ‘‘white’’-collar crime is not the preserve of the angels. Policing agencies tend to treat it as a low priority compared with other types of crime, and the lack of sophistication of the FBI has been revealed in its inability to read communications in Arabic, and its otiose computer systems. When we remember that computer-related crime also belongs to this category, we can see how white-collar crime will experience huge growth in the twentyfirst century, with enforcement agencies often being one step behind.

It is a difficult balancing act between civil liberty and minimising crime, but a system which plays into the hands of the organised white-collar criminals has a mushrooming impact on crimes generally. It is already expensive economically, and is a price that the law-abiding are forced to pay, a redistributive tax which has all to do with human rapacity and nothing to do with the public good. It has to be time to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of such activity, and to place the burden of proof for once back on the suspected perpetrators. The huge excitement and promise which greeted the onset of the twenty-first century is in danger of being undermined if the white-collar crime threat is allowed to perpetuate itself unchecked, and the events of 11 September are the worst example imaginable of a terrorist accompaniment to white collar crime. In this double issue we note that quality does have a contribution to make in times of turbulence, as well as in attempting to restore peace and stability. Quality and managerial auditing are closely interrelated, although they sometimes operate in separate compartments leading to overlap and inefficiency. This volume indicates the enduring contribution possible through a quality perspective.

Future editions of the journal will feature critical perspectives, ethics and fraud, banking, and e-commerce and the knowledge economy. Such topical issues have never possessed greater relevance. I look forward to sharing these topics with you in 2002. One also hopes that 2002 will see measures adopted that will safeguard all world citizens from terrorist attack, as well as tackling the threats presented through world poverty, and social, religious and political injustice.

Professor Gerald Vinten

Previously published in: Managerial Auditing Journal, Volume 17, Number 1/2, 2002  less