2019 US Virgin Islands Code
Title 14 - Crimes
Chapter 30 - Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
§ 603. Legislative findings

(a) Sophisticated criminal activity is diversified and diverts substantial sums from the Territory of the Virgin Islands' legitimate markets through fraud and corruption.

(b) In addition to the more traditional criminal offenses, sophisticated criminal activity can involve the illegal manipulation of legitimate business and other enterprises by the use of fraudulent schemes and practices.

(c) The money and power generated by sophisticated criminal activity can also be used to infiltrate legitimate business, to invest in real and personal property through trusts, alien corporations and fictitious names, and to subvert democratic and law enforcement processes in the Territory of the Virgin Islands and elsewhere.

(d) Sophisticated criminal activity develops and flourishes when the criminal and other sanctions available to combat it are unnecessarily limited in scope and impact.

(e) Traditional law enforcement strategies and techniques that concentrate on bringing criminal penalties to bear on individual offenders for the commission of specific offenses, and that do not focus on offenders involved in sophisticated criminal activity, and on their influence on various legal and illegal organizations and patterns of such sophisticated criminal activity, and that do not enlist the assistance of private enforcement through the use of civil sanctions are inadequate to control such sophisticated criminal activity. Comprehensive strategies must be developed, evidentiary, procedural and substantive laws must be strengthened, and criminal penalties and civil sanctions must be enhanced.