This is Paul Adamson and welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of my online magazine InCompass.

I chat informally with personalities from a wide variety of backgrounds on a wide variety of subjects.

If you like this podcast, you can go to the magazine's website, Encompass-Europe.com,

or any of the main platforms for free access to all the podcasts to date. I hope you enjoy this

conversation. My guest is Dr. Shan Humume. Dr. Shahn Hume. Dr. Shan Hume is the research leader at RAND Europe,

and I should point out that I'm a member of the Council of Advisors of RAND Europe.

Sean, you've been doing some research with your colleagues, mapping the risk of serious and

organized crime, infiltrating legitimate businesses.

Why have you been undertaking this research?

Thanks very much, Paul. I'm really delighted to be here with you today.

So that's right. My colleagues and I at Rand Europe were asked at the beginning of last year

by the Directorate General Home Affairs at the European Commission

to carry out this study.

It's one of several studies that have been commissioned by the European Commission focusing

on serious and organised crime in the EU, which I think is really reflective of the sort of strong

political appetite at the moment for change in this area and the recognition that

serious and organised crime is a really big and increasing threat in the EU. And so we did this

study at Rand, Europe, along with several partners from the Government Transparency Institute,

the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Optimity Advisors and also Ernest and Young.

And the question that the Commission really wanted us to answer was how much money is being

earned by serious and organised crime groups in the EU.

And they wanted to know, really, they wanted us to estimate revenues across nine priority criminal markets.

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