Risk Assessment of Economic Organised Crime in Ukraine

The subject of the study is the methodological foundations and applied approaches to assessing the impact of organised crime on economic relations in the country. Methodology. The study uses two key approaches to the criminological analysis of organised crime: statistical (based on state statistics) and sociological (risk assessment based on expert surveys). The purpose of the article is to compare analytical approaches and results of data analysis on the activities of organised crime in the economic sphere in Ukraine. The activity of organised crime in the economic sphere in Ukraine has been analysed on the basis of state statistics and sociological surveys conducted in recent years under various research projects. With a focus on the comparative interest of these two criminological approaches, the authors highlights the problem of identifying manifestations of organised economic crime not as individual non-systemic cases, but as a criminal phenomenon of a systemic nature which permeates various areas of economic activity. At the same time, it was found that the state statistics do not objectively reflect the problems of organised crime in the country, and that they are levelling the real state. Among the various sociological methods of criminological analysis, the authors focused on the risk-oriented approach to the assessment of crime, considering the risk of the spread of organised crime in the economic sphere on the basis of an expert assessment of the probability and consequences of the spread of these threats. This approach and its results point to critical gaps in criminological research based on state statistics and suggest promising approaches for future research. Conclusion. The risk-oriented approach points to systemic manifestations of the phenomenon of organised crime and the high risk of organised crime groups in the economy of Ukraine. Using a unique empirical base formed by research projects, significant threats to the country's economy and high-risk threats in the form of various manifestations of organised crime were identified: according to law enforcement agencies – 62.30%; in the system of hybrid threats – 41.38%-44.74%; in the field of forestry – 55.67%; in the field of fiscal security, in the section of individual branches of the economy, the most significant level of risk is in the range of 60-70%.