The Mafia – A Global Octopus

Prof. Gerhard Muller is a criminologist of world renown and a prominent specialist in the fight against organized crime. For more than two decades he has headed the United Nations’ Commission for Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, and is a classifier of international mafia groups.

The world has become small. Air passenger traffic has risen dramatically. Billions of dollars daily change hands by electronic transfer, and nearly half of this wealth is concealed from taxmen in order to keep its origin secret.

When criminal acts, deals and schemes violate the laws of more than one country, they are said to be transnational crimes. The UN has classified all transnational crimes into 17 groups.

1. MONEY LAUNDERING aims at legalizing all-gotten profits. A huge portion of this money is earned through bribery, corruption, black-market activity, tax evasion, and especially through arms smuggling, the sale of stolen arts objects, and drug trafficking.

It has been established that the annual proceeds from the illicit sale of narcotics worldwide are between $300 billion and $500 billion. What do the drug barons do with this fabulous wealth? In the United States, nothing, because this is dirty cash. But it can be laundered abroad and brought back to the U.S. to buy whole industries, real estate and political influence.

The most common way of laundering money is to take it to a foreign country clandestinely, and place it in bank accounts there via repeated international transfers, after which it will be impossible to trace its origin. Finally, the “clean” bills are legally invested in the economy but remain under the underworld’s control.

We do not know the true magnitude of money laundering, but investigation by the Group of Seven industrialized nations is yielding fruit. Investigation is carried out in those countries where the secrecy of bank deposits is guarded by law; the aim of investigation is to secure information on suspicious bank accounts.

2. TERRORISM. Only recently, most Americans knew little about the scope of international terrorism because their country was not affected. The terrorist act at New York’s International Trade Center, the explosion during the Olimpic Games in Atlanta, and blowing up of American planes made them aware that Americans and American interests are becoming a target of international terrorism.

Governments in all countries (except those that support international terrorism) hoped to curb international terrorism through international negotiations and accords. But every round of talks left the adherents of a “firm hand” dissatisfied. As a result, acts of terrorism are continuing, while modern communications and means of transport are making it easier to commit such acts. Governments that are tough toward terrorists must therefore be prepared for suddenterrorist relation.

An international mechanism that would insure the arrest and extradition of international terrorists is still in the making. Criminologists are still studying the problem of terrorism, which knows no state frontiers.

3. THEFT OF ART WORKS AND CULTURAL OBJECTS. Such crimes pose a potential threat to the cultural heritage of all nations. Tombs and monuments were blown up in the days of the Egyptian pharaons, too. But today’s sophisticated weapons used in perpetrating crime and high demand for cultural objects (which can be easily transported nowadays) have enabled international plunderers to work out a system through which they can deprive a whole region, or even a whole country, of its priceless cultural heritage. Every year art works worth an estimated $4.5 billion are stolen and sold on the world market. Investigators are searching for 45,000 valuable works of art, as 2,000 new objects appear on the list every month.

4. THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. The concept “theft of intellectual property” includes violation of the rights of authors and performers, and unlawful use of copyright marks and trade-marks. The temptation to reproduce protected works illegally and sell them cheaply or at their usual prices, is overwhelming, especially in countries with an underdeveloped economy. It is difficult to measure in monetary terms the extent of the damage done to the countries where intellectual property is produced and registered. The Association of American Software Makers has estimated that illicit use of software alone causes losses of $7.5 billion annually. Copyright marks cannot be forged by small enterprises or lone entrepreneurs. This job requires skillful coordination and streamlined marketing system – a business that often requires collusion with government officials.

5. ILLICUT ARMS TRADE. Armed conflicts in hot spots worldwide are fueledby an international network of arms producers and suppliers. The scale of their activity defies statistical valuation. There are not many underworld dealers, but they are great tricksters who act in collusion with government agencies. Complete information on the illicit arms trade is unavailable, despite the fact that the origins of the arms and military equipment can be traced.

The most dangerous aspect of these crimes is illicit trafficking in radioactive materials. All attempts in such deals have so far failed, with the goods not reaching the addressees. In a number of cases, the people who stole and transported radioactive materials, and those surrounding them were exposed to radiation. Acting on recommendations of international organizations, many countries have already established control on the sources of radioactive materials.

6. HIJACKING OF PLANES. Airlines suffered a great deal from this crime in the 1970s and 1980s. Only in rare cases were the culprits lone criminals who demanded ransoms. In most air crimes the terrorists made political demands in an attempt to demonstrate their power, make their organizations known, and propogate their ideologies.

Countermeasures against hijacking were swift and effective. Today there are much fewer cases of hijacking.

7. PIRACY. This long forgotten phenomenon in the mid-1970s, manifesting itself in the illegalshipment of narcotics from South and Central America to the United States in yachts and fishing vessels, which criminals seized in the high seas or at a port after killing their owners or crew, whoever were on board. Several thousand vessels were seized in acts od piracy. Today piracy also occurs in narrow navigable canals. Thousands of African thieves do not miss the opportunity to steal any valuables and cargoes from vessels lying at anchor or moving at a low speed. However, such theft is on the decline. Piracy in South-East Asia is believed to be controlled by organized crime, often associated with the armed forces. Criminologists are inclined to infer that synchronized attacks on vessels in different parts of the world are not coincidental, and can be traced to a single center.

8. HIJACKING ON HIGHWAYS. One may be surprised that this type of crime is included in the UN classification, since the hijacking of a truck cors when trucks travel enormous distances from Eastern to Western Europe, or from Central Asian to Baltic countries. Unfortunately, the frequency of truck hijacking rises in proportion to the growth of trade turnover.

The exact scales of hijacking is not known since only four countries have answered the UN questionnaire on this subject. This type of felony is bound to become a burning problem as state borders come more and more open, and as organized crime becomes more wide-spread, especially in Eastern Europe.

9. FRAUD IN INSURANCE. With insurance now a global industry, swindle in one country now affects all countries. Although the overall damage caused worldwide by this crime has not been estimated, we know, for example, that it causes Australia to lose around A $1.7 billion annually, and the United States $100 billion.

Anxious to have a finger in the swindle pie, organized crime is seeking to bring together small businesses operating in different areas of insurance (for instance, in sea-borne cargoes insurance), or to penetrate the insurance industry itself.

10. COMPUTER-RELATED CRIME. As soon as governmental and commercial organizations started making intensive use of computers, the mafia reached out for computer networks. Although the exact extent to which these networks are exposed to criminal influences has not been established, we know that organized crime is making active use of all computer-releated facilities.

11. ECOLOGICAL CRIME. The entire world population suffers from ecological crime, the perpetrators being mostly enterprises that act in collision with environmental regulators. This became particularly manifest when production began to be transferred to developing countries, where controls are either almost non-existent, or depend on the whim of foreign manufactures. The latter lavishly bribe government officials in these countries. When it comes to employment and gross domestic product growth, the poor nations prefer industrialization to a clean environment. The underworld has already seized a hefty portion of the business of transporting and burying health-hazard substances.

12. TRADE IN HUMANS has been gaining momentum and includes transporting illegal emigrants to their destinations, procuring women for prostitution, hiring people for slave bavor, acquiring household servants from developing countries, and selling children for illegal adoption for enormous sums.

There are adequate laws to prevent such crimes, and their stringency matches the transparency of state frontiers. However, the problem of trade in human beings is gaining a new aspect as large numbers of Third World inhabitans seek to emigrate to relatively more prosperous countries.

For the most part, the flow of illegal immigrants to developed countries is controlled by the underworld. Ordinarily, these people fail to find jobs and join marginal groups who are exploited and forced into crimes and disturbances.

13. TRADE IN HUMAN ORGANS. The first transplantation of the kidney is known tj have taken place in 1954, of the lungs in 1963, and of the heart in 1967. Nearly half a million kidney transplantations have been carries out of date. Transplantation of body organs as a branch of medicine has given rise to an industry that supplies donor organs. The United States has about 70 organ-supplying agencies, and federal authorities are trying to regulate their activities.

There are some 12,000 potential donors in the United States. As this is much fewer than the number needed, illegal business that supply organs for transplantations are highly lucrative; a great many of them are based in Third World countries. «Donors» often commit murder for the sake of organs, or they get organs from children of poor families who sell this «commodity» for a pittance.

After the apperarance of the first world press reports exposing illegal trade in human organs, a number of countries set up commissions to draft laws that would regulate the acquisition of transplantation organs. There is sufficient evidence to prove that the delivery of organs from the Third World is controlled by criminal groupings based in Western Europe.

14. DRUG TRAFFICKING. The global turnover of this illicit trade is estimated at an annual $300 billion to $500 billion. Vital international agreements such as the United Nations 1961 World Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and 1988 Conventionak Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Spychotropic Substances created a basis for enstablishing international controls. However, controls are not in place due to the following reasons:

 

- the UN cannot monitor the efficacy of these measures and implement the Inernational Drug Control Program because it lacks funds;

- for the same reason, the relevant national and regional programs are not financed;

- countries deffer strongly in their approaches to the problem of drug trafficking (some insist on bans, others on control and trolerance);

- many states lack legislative and technical bases for compliance with the international covenants.

15. SHAM BANKRUPTCY. The globalization of trade has turned sham bankruptcies in one country into an international crime. We do not know the true magnitude of this phenomenon, but analysis of selective cases show that the mafia will buy a lucrative enterprise and bankrupt it for the sake of even greater gains. Coordinated international efforts are indispensable for combating such crimes.

16. PENETRATING LEGAL BUSINESSES. When one drinks beer one doesn’t care whether the brewery is mafi-owned. Drug cartels and other criminal organizations own a large number of enterprises. The amount of drug money alone invested in legal businesses is estimated at $200 billion to $500 billion. The number of businesses owned by criminals has been growing in direct proportion to those owned by respectable people.

With criminal-owned businesses muchrooming at such a pace, a time will come when the world economy will find itself under the underworld control. Its very difficult to establish whether a company manager has connections with narcobusiness, or whether an enterprise has been bought in order to launder dirty cash. Half of the daily international money transfers are believed to be laundered in areas with offshore banks and/or tax havens.

17. CORRUPTION AND BRIBING PUBLIC FIGURES, PARTY LEADERS, AND ELECTED OFFICIALS. To date, bribing officials is not sublect to punishment in a number of countries, although other cases of bribery are defined as a crime in the Criminal Code of the country concerned. Under the veil of commission or fees for consultancy, intermediation or legal services, bribes have become a part of business overheads worldwide.

Traders and investors often say that they wouldn’t be able to do businessin certain countries without violating the business and political ethics of these countries. A recently formed international organization called Transparency International has set out to work out fundamental principles of international business ethics. These principles must provide for:

- publication of data revealing the extent of bribary and corruption of politicians and businessmen in each of the countries concerned, according to assessment by foreign business partners;

- bringing preassure to bear on national law enforcement agencies for the purpose of wiping out bribary;

- searching for means of international cooperation to combat bribary of the officials, including means such as enacting anti-graft laws in the countries concerned;

- enhancement of international cooperation between non-governmental organizations, such as the International Chamber of Commerce.

POSTSCRIPT. The UN”s classification of transnational crimes reveals the underworld”s strong impact on private individuals, on certain economic sectors and on the world economy as a whole. Such crimes are so horrible that they can become unbearable to humanity in the future. Both individuals and businesses must take immediate action to protect themselves against the perils posed by the underworld. Increasing international cooperation must be recognized as an indispensable requisite incombating organized crime worldwide.

The UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice believes that it is urgently necessary for countries to extradite criminals and put them on trial, promptly exchange information on criminal activity, provide technical assistance to one another for crime prevention purposes, and take more stringent measures to prevent cross-border activities by criminals and smugglers of firearms, explosives, and substances that can be used in making nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The world’s nations must also expose such activities more vigorously.

Besides poisoning the climate of entrepreneurship and corrupting political leaders, transnational crime makes a mockery of human rights. The mafia kills democracy in whatever society it dominates. Such an evil can be vanquished only through the concerted efforts of politicians, businessmen, journalists and law enforcers worldwide.

 

Vocabulary for more detailed reading:

renown – слава, известность

prominent – выдающийся

conceal – скрывать, утаивать

 

earn – зарабатывать

tax evasion – уклонение от уплаты налогов

proceeds – выручка

real estate – недвижимость

clandestinely – тайно

account – счет

bill – счет, банкнота

magnitude – величина

scope – масштаб

affect – влиять

target – цель

to curb – обуздать

negotiations – переговоры

accord – соглашение

adherent – приверженец

tough – жесткий

retaliation – возмездие

pose threat - представлять угрозу

heritage – наследие

tomb – надгробный памятник

perpetrate – совершить преступление

plunderer – грабитель

temptation – искушение

overwhelming – подавляющий

monetary – дежный

extent – степень, мера

demage – ущерб

collusion – сговор

to fuel – подливать масла в огонь

supplier – поставщик

valuation – оценка

trickster – обманщик, ловкач

attempt – попытка

expose to – подвергать

culprit – виновник

ransom – выкуп

propogate – распростронять

swift – быстрый

 

shipment – отправка

vessel – судно

seize – зазхватывать, завладевать

crew – экипаж

lying at anchor – стоящий на якоре

decline – падение, снижение

infer – приходить к выводу

coincidental – случайный

 

frequency – частота

turnover – оборот

insurance - страхование

swindle – надувательство, мошенничесво

penetrate – проникать

 

 

enterprise - предприятие

 

gain – получать, добиться

momentum – инерция, разгон

destination – пункт назначения

procure – сводничать

slave labour – рабский труд

adoption – усыновление

stringency – строгость

match – подходить, соответствовать

transparency – прозрачность

frontier – граница

seek – стремиться

disturbances – беспорядки

 

kidney – почка

lungs - лёгкие

to date – до сих пор

lucrative – выгодный

for the sake of – ради

commodity – товар

pittance – жалкие гроши

expose – раскрывать, разоблачать

expose to – подвергаться

acquisition – приобретение

sufficient – достаточный

delivery – поставка, доставка

substance - вещество

due to – из-за

implement – осуществлять

lack – не иметь, недоставать

approach – подход

insist – настаивать

compliance – подчинение (закону)

covenant – договор

sham – ложный

turn into – превращать

gain (n) - выгода

 

penetrate – проникать

brewery – пивоваренный завод

business – дело, предприятие, организация

offshore – заграничный, иностранный

haven – гавань, убежище

 

concerned – заинтересованный

veil – предлог, маска

fee – гонорар

intermediation – посредничество

overhead – наверху

reveal –разоблачить

bear – выдерживать, нести

wipe out – уничтожать

graft – взятка, незаконные доходы, подкуп

enhancement – увеличение, повышение

Postscript

impact – влияние

unbearable – невыносимый, нестерпимый

peril – опасность, риск

pose – представлять

stringent – строгий

vigorous – бодрый, энергичный

entrepreneurship – предпринимательство

mockery – издевательство, насмешка

evil – зло

vanquish – побеждать, преодолевать