Conclusion

Abstract

Financial crimes are not new phenomena. However, technological changes have contributed to modify our self-understanding and world interpretation. New information and communication technologies have improved the way criminals are designing and realizing their criminal activities and operations. Technology has substantially changed the situation of human being, when facing various financial crimes. We have become the slaves of our own technological tools (Heidegger, Marcel). Consciously or not, our self-understanding as well as our world interpretation could have been deeply influenced by our relation to technology. Indeed, technology has made our self-understanding and world interpretation replacing their reference patterns. We have also learned from Kierkegaard that the way we are dealing with reality, either as immediacy (the aesthetician), or as moral duty (the ethicist) will make us either apathetic, or morally-focused toward any dehumanizing phenomenon. However, even the notion of moral duty has to be philosophically questioned, since its import is not self-evident. Good and evil are existentially-rooted concepts, so that we should never exclude any attempt to reinterpret their basic contents (Nietzsche). If we would like to have efficient prevention strategies against financial crimes, then we must consider that such philosophical notions could be crucial for the way we are facing any dehumanizing phenomenon. We could deny that our self-understanding and our world interpretation actually vary because of the way we look at various dimensions of human experience (technological tools, time and immediacy, moral duty). But in doing so, we will be unable to design any efficient prevention strategy against financial crimes. We will have lost the meaning of humankind we had to safeguard. Financial crimes will not disappear in the short-term. Their complexity and variety are always increasing, from 1 year to the next. From a perspective of existential/existentiell philosophy, what is essential is the existing subject. Existential/existentiell leaders could improve organizational ethics/culture. They could be role models and learn us to serenely face existential questioning, when dealing with the pervasive phenomenon of financial crimes.