Organized criminal organizations have the following traits:
- They are profit-oriented: Their goal is to make money by supplying illegal goods (such as drugs, weapons, human organs, prostitutes or sex slaves) through criminal means (such extortion, protection, corruption, murder or money-laundering).
- Most have high longevity: Some criminal organizations have existed for decades if not for centuries.
- They are organized so as to facilitate criminal activities, such as non-hierarchical and flexible networks.
- They all use violence at every level of their trade: against competitors, customers, suppliers, officials and even their own member as a form of social control.
- They engage in corruption of government and corporate officials as well as law enforcement agents
In the context of globalization, not only have traditional criminal networks, such as the Italian Mafia or the Japanese Yakuza adapted to the new political and economic conditions, but new criminal organizations have emerged precisely as a product of globalization capitalizing on the profitability and high demands for new illegal commodities on a global scale.
Russian Mafia
ReplyDeleteWhen the communist state finally collapsed, the Russian mafia found itself in a position to benefit tremendously from the chaotic transition to capitalism. It was able to take control of large segments of the Russian economy: it accounts for approximately 40% of the Russian economy and controls around 50,000 businesses and numerous financial institutions and banks involved in joint ventures with foreign investors. One of its major activities is extortion whereby 70 to 80% of Russian businesses pay protection money.
Most of the 12,000 identified criminal groups are involved in sex trafficking, money laundering, weapon and drug smuggling. As any profitable enterprise would do, the Russian mafia developed ties with other criminal groups (Italian mafia, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese triads) but also with revolutionary groups (such as the Colombian FARC, a group defined as terrorist by the Colombian government and which is heavily involved in the production of cocaine).
Whereas other established organized crime groups have suffered losses at the hands of law enforcement (US and Italian mafias, the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia), the Russian mafia has benefited from the weakness and corruption of the Russian state and is able to operate in almost complete impunity and extend its reach on a global scale.
Japanese Yakusa
The Japanese Yakuza have existed since the 17th century and count approximately 5,000 groups across Japan. They operate mostly in Japan with ramifications throughout Asia, Australia and Europe. They are involved in drugs and weapons smuggling as well as money-laundering and extortion but they are major providers of sex slaves and prostitutes throughout Asia as well as prime organizers of sex tours.
Chinese Triads
The Chinese Triads also came into existence in the 17th century as secret societies. They operate as loosely organized structures in conjunction with Chinese gangs (also known as “Tongs”). The Triads are also heavily involved in the sex trafficking and prostitution on a global scale as well as illegal immigrant smuggling. They own massage parlors, escort services and night clubs in most Western countries. These groups are also involved in bride abductions: the kidnapping of young women and girls to be married to men living in areas where brides are not available due to a shortage of girls.
Italian-America Mafia
ReplyDeleteThe Italian-American mafia, also known as La Cosa Nostra (“our thing” in Italian, LCN) has been in existence since the early 1900s, created by Italian immigrants, mostly from Sicily. This organization, initially composed of five major families, was the first one to be labeled “mafia” and became part of the popular imagination through Mario Puzo’s book, The Godfather, and the series of films based on it. The complex structure of LCN has been uncovered by US-Italian joint investigations that led to hundreds of arrests in the 1980s and 1990s.
These investigations also revealed the deep mafia infiltration of the Italian dominant political party, up to seven-time Prime Minister Andreotti. Today, the FBI estimates that LCN has approximately 25,000 members worldwide. Although less powerful than in the glory days post-World War II, Cosa Nostra is still involved in murder, extortion, drug trafficking, corruption, gambling, infiltration of legitimate businesses, labor racketeering, loan sharking, prostitution, pornography, and tax fraud schemes.
Colombian Cartels
For many years, the Medellin and Cali cartels from Colombia were incredibly powerful organizations on the global criminal stage. The Medellin cartel was headed by the infamous Pablo Escobar who became one of the richest men in the world and who once described cocaine as “the Third World’s atomic bomb” (Robinson, 2000). The Medellin cartel was instrumental in developing smuggling routes for their cocaine to Europe and the United States. When the United States government demanded that Escobar be extradited for drug smuggling, he offered to pay the Colombian national debt (and was not extradited).
The Medellin cartel is also infamous for the level of violence it exacted: the cartel is responsible for the assassination of four Colombian presidential candidates, a Supreme Court judge and more than twenty lower-court judges. At its height, the Medellin cartel controlled 80% of the world’s cocaine traffic. The cartel’s demise would come in 1993 after an all-out war with US Delta forces and Colombian Special force and the shooting death of Escobar.
The Cali cartel, led by the Orejuela brothers, was always more sophisticated and discrete than the Medellin cartel but no less violent. It benefited from the end of the rival cartel to reorganize cocaine trafficking in more flexible mini-cartels that generated billions of dollars in profits. However, stricter law enforcement and the emergence of new cartels have reduced its hold on the cocaine market.
Newer Organized Crime Groups
ReplyDeleteThe political, social and economic changes brought about by globalization have affected the shape of organized crime so that not only have established networks shifted their activities and modes of organizations but also global instability has made possible the emergence of new criminal networks on the global stages. These networks focused their efforts on illegal activities that would be low-risk and very lucrative: mainly, sex trafficking and prostitution.
In the 1990s, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the liberalization of former communist countries in Eastern Europe produced weak states where organized criminal organizations could flourish. For instance, Albanian criminal groups, once scattered and disorganized, became a hub for all types of trafficking from the East to Western Europe, especially prostitution and sex trafficking but also illegal immigrants. These groups took advantage of their geographical position, right across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, the main destination for their trafficked “goods.” Albanian groups are known for their violence and ruthlessness. Their main mode of “recruitment” into prostitution and sex trafficking is through abduction so much so that, in parts of Albania, parents keep their girls from school as schools are a prime place of abduction.
Similarly, the breakup of Yugoslavia into different republics, such as Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, has given rise to ethnically-specific organized crime groups. These groups target particularly the massive refugee camps where there is a large pool of potential victims available. Also, since revolutionary groups were very active in former Yugoslavia, the black market for illegal weapons was very profitable for criminal groups. The deals are that revolutionary groups abduct women in refugee camps, turn them over to organized crime groups that process them into prostitution whereas organized crime groups repay revolutionaries with weapons and whatever else they might need to wage war.
At one point or another, we have all received spam emails offering us vast sums of money if we let small amounts be deposited on our bank accounts for a while. These emails generally come from supposed Nigerian officials. They actually the latest transnational financial scams for Nigerian organized crime groups, a low-cost, virtually risk-free activity. Nigerian and other West African groups have long been involved in drug trafficking as well as sex trafficking mostly for the French and Belgian prostitution markets.
As the Medellin and Cali cartels lost their hold on the traffic of cocaine, they were replaced by smaller, more decentralized groups from Mexico and Latin America, all initially involved in drug trafficking and money laundering, as well as prostitution rings in Florida, as in the case of the large Cadena Mexican gang.
In other words, every region of the world has seen the rise of new organized crime networks establishing their platform of activities in their area of origin but quickly linking with each other and with older criminal organizations in areas of operation where risks were lower and profits higher, such as sex trafficking. All these groups benefited from the increased importance of global flows.