No Smoking Gun: Methodology in the Uncovering of White-Collar Crime

Abstract

Researching white-collar crime has always been difficult because the work usually meets heavy resistance. Most white-collar criminals hold positions of privilege that enable them to deny culpability or to channel discussion of such criminality in certain directions; thus, while it is not hard to see the patterns and behaviors of white-collar criminality, it is a challenge to speak of and address it without having the blessing of someone already in power. My research journey began with a methodology that deliberately held the naïve expectation that Hong Kong’s authorities were really as open as they proclaimed to be, and I also held a still-forming view of white-collar crime and its place in Hong Kong.