00 / Research portfolio

Criminology · financial crime · economic transparency

Criminal participation and hidden control in the legal economy

I study how criminal actors, sanctioned entities and other sources of financial-crime risk use lawful companies, ownership structures and markets. My work combines criminology with empirical and computational methods, with a focus on hidden control, sanctions and anti-money laundering.

Criminal infiltrationCorporate opacityOwnership structuresSanctions & AML

Selected work Research CV Email

01 / Selected work

Selected publications

Published and applied research, with the evidence, method and main result kept visible.

European Journal of Criminology · 23(1), 182–202 · 2026

On the enforcement of targeted sanctions: estimating the control of sanctioned Russian entities over European companies and proposing a methodology to detect sanction circumvention

Giovanni Nicolazzo & Matteo Anastasio · DOI 10.1177/14773708251381914

Evidence: European company ownership and control structures linked to sanctioned Russian entities.
Method: Ownership-chain reconstruction and estimation of direct and indirect effective control.
Finding: Exposure is especially high in Ukraine and Western Europe, with finance, wholesale trade and real estate among the sectors most affected.

Article & DOI ↗

VoxEU · CEPR · 24 Sep 2026

The quality of capital allocation in Europe

Giovanni Nicolazzo

Argument: Public capital allocation should combine low administrative friction with analytical capacity to recognise material anomalies and protect the competitive and spillover effects of public investment.
Policy implication: Distributed administrative information should be connected and, where warranted, transmitted rapidly to competent authorities for specialist assessment.

Read the VoxEU column ↗

Journal of Economic Criminology · 8, 100155 · 2025

Criminal participation in the legal economy during a health crisis

Giovanni Nicolazzo · DOI 10.1016/j.jeconc.2025.100155

Method: Proxy-based screening of company incorporations and ownership changes in Italy, 2020–2021.
Finding: Selected suspicious ownership features changed in frequency and distribution during the health crisis.

Open article ↗

Research report · 82 pp. · 2025

Restrictive measures: the challenges in front of the EU — report on schemes employed to circumvent sanctions

Giovanni Nicolazzo, Bohdan Bernatskyi, Laura Ventre, Giorgia Cascone, Caterina Paternoster, Davide Bremi & Lorena Axinte

Evidence: Sanctions-circumvention cases, enforcement material and policy evidence.
Output: Recurring schemes, facilitators, corporate vehicles and operational risk indicators.

Research record ↗Report PDF ↗

All publications on Google Scholar ↗

02 / Current research

Work in progress

Three ongoing studies on AML and criminal infiltration across the legal economy.

Public administration · AML

Research article · in progress

Active cooperation for anti-money-laundering purposes in public administrations

Empirical and legal research on how public administrations understand and operationalise AML duties, including the identification and reporting of suspicious activity.

Criminal infiltration · waste sector

Empirical study · in progress

Signals of criminal infiltration in the waste sector

Company, ownership and case evidence are used to distinguish observable signals of criminal infiltration from generic risk markers.

Real estate · money laundering

Working paper · empirical analysis

Real-estate vulnerability to money-laundering dynamics

Research on whether ownership structures, asset characteristics and market conditions associated with money-laundering vulnerability correspond to observable market effects.

03 / Methods

Methods

The toolkit used to reconstruct ownership, connect company data and test risk patterns.

Linked company dataOwnership reconstructionNetwork analysisProxy-based screeningCase & documentary analysisRisk-indicator design

04 / About

Research profile

I work at the intersection of criminology, economic analysis and financial-crime prevention, focusing on when formally lawful companies, assets and transactions become vehicles for criminal participation, hidden control or regulatory circumvention. I use quantitative, network and case-based evidence at company, market and network level.

Archive note: why criminal infiltration should be studied beyond mafia-type organisations ↗

05 / Public-interest projects

Selected public projects

Open research and civic-transparency projects.

Open research

Criminal infiltration in the legal economy — systematic review

A reproducible literature review with a methodological protocol, paper registries, screening decisions, scripts and saturation metrics.

Open repository ↗

Civic transparency

Lamezia Trasparente Monitor

A public information system combining data ingestion and a web application to make municipal information easier to inspect and follow.

Open repository ↗

06 / Profiles & contact

Research profiles and contact

Research identifiers, publications, code and contact.

Google ScholarPublications & citations ↗ORCIDResearch identifier ↗GitHubCode & repositories ↗LinkedInProfessional profile ↗Emailgiovanni.nicolazzo@unicatt.it ↗Research CVAppointments, education & outputs ↗