Global corporate crime-fighters: Private transnational responses to piracy and money laundering

Abstract

Countering cross-border crime is conventionally portrayed as a struggle between a new breed of transnational criminals and a defensive reaction by state authorities. In contrast, this paper argues that combating quintessentially transnational crimes like piracy and money laundering increasingly depends on private transnational companies fighting crime for profit by selling their services to other private firms. The paper broadens the literature on private security and global security governance by focusing on transnational responses to transnational threats in previously neglected maritime and financial realms. The rise of such corporate crime-fighters is explained by the recent evolution of environments structured by overlapping sovereignty claims which limit state enforcement while simultaneously creating new markets for security services. These cases represent instances of global governmentality insofar as they are diffuse, networked exercises of indirect power carried out by private actors, situated in markets, who are responsible for policing themselves and others.