Police Enforcement of Tax Arrears Collection: Political Opportunism or the Last Resort for Transition States? By

Introduction The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) and the Russian Federation have all embarked, with varying degrees of success, upon significant economic changes from centrally-planned, partly ‘closed’ economies, to more open free-market economies. Consequently, free-market systems for raising revenues for public sector activities have had to be developed and implemented. Under these systems, as former Russian Federation Prime Minister Kirenko said, ‘...if the State does not learn to collect taxes, it will cease to exist’ (Treisman, 1998, p. 56). For many of these countries the scale of the problem is quite significant, as noted by the Council of Europe in 2001, ‘...tax evasion, pursued on a large scale and linked to economic crime, continues to hamper the economic resources of many countries in Europe’ (Council of Europe, 2001, para. 4 [ix]). Two important contributing factors are institutional inefficiency in the state tax services (ILO, 1995) and the unintended criminal opportunities resulting from privatisation. Referring to the problem of economic crime, a Council of Europe Committee (1998) stated that, ‘ The most common predicate criminal offences arise out of the process of privatisation ... e.g. offences of unlawful business, tax evasion...’