Dataset in support of the Southampton Doctoral Thesis 'Perspectives of Academics, Prosecutors, Law enforcement agents, Journalists and other stakeholders on the trends of illegal investments in the UK real estate sector'

The data collected for this academic investigation involves 22 semi-structured interviews conducted with academics who had international expertise and practitioners that were prosecutors, law enforcement agents, experts in financial investigations, lawyers, real estate community, investigative journalists, asset recovery experts, Non-governmental organisations (NGO), policy institutes/’think tanks’. Before the data gathering started, relevant information on potential interviewees was collected via the internet, mass media publications, scholarly articles, and the websites of international organisations to select individuals who were directly or indirectly linked to the research topic from a legislative/criminological standpoint in order to create a matrix. The process of selecting interviewees was based on purposive sampling and snowball sampling. In the case of purposive sampling the interviewees were chosen as eligible for this study due to their rich knowledge of the investments of criminal proceeds in the UK real estate market. Snowball sampling, on the contrary, enabled me to access other groups of interviewees, through my initial participants. The participants in this study were accessed via e-mails/telephone calls/LinkedIn, through personal networks (through my legal and academic background) and through events such as conferences. The interviews were audio-recorded as part of their consent. The average length of interviews lasted from 35-45 minutes. In this study the process involved collecting data from two different countries, the UK and Italy, through semi-structured interviews with multiple actors with first-hand knowledge on this research topic. The interviews were transcribed and uploaded on NVivo software for coding aim.