Such crimes are of special concern to U.S. policy makers because in most cases there is no clear identifiable enemy to target. This is different from interstate conflicts, in which parties have well-defined targets, and wars, in which armies and rules of engagement are obvious to all sides. Any battles waged against the generic front of "drug trafficking" or "money laundering" are extremely hard to fight and require significant international cooperation.
The Nature of Organized Crime
As noted on its Web site (www.fbi.gov), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines organized crime as "any group having some manner of a formalized structure and whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities." Organized-crime groups have several characteristics in common. Much as it does with business, financial gain drives and sustains organized crime. Most groups carry out more than one type of crime. Although not an absolute requirement, many groups require their members to be of the same family or ethnic background in order to ensure loyalty and to pursue a common goal or scheme. Most organized-crime groups have become successful in one way or another by corrupting government officials. Another common characteristic is a hierarchical structure, with defined leadership-subordinate roles. In many cases, organized-crime groups are permanent and do not depend on the participation of one or a few individuals to exist, and the groups usually have influence over large areas of a region, country, or countries.
Organized-crime groups undertake a wide range of illicit global activities. They traffic in explosives, arms, narcotics, humans, metals, minerals, endangered flora and fauna, and Freon gas. They conduct extensive money laundering, fraud, graft, extortion, bribery, economic espionage, smuggling of embargoed goods, multinational auto theft, international prostitution, industrial and technological espionage, bank fraud, financial market manipulation, counterfeiting, corruption, and contract murder.
Of these activities, corruption is perhaps the biggest threat to states. Crime groups greatly compromise and jeopardize governments when they use corruption to achieve their aims. Organized criminals co-opt officials and leaders with a combination of bribery, graft, collusion, and/or extortion. Organized crime has successfully targeted such countries as Colombia, Italy, Thailand, Mexico, Russia, and Japan with payoffs or threats to justice officials to alter charges, change court rulings, lose evidence, or simply lose interest. By undercutting justice systems, these groups undercut society. Sometimes when organized crime targets members of police forces and armed forces, and those members do not cooperate, they become targets of hired assassins.
There is increasing interdependency among crime groups. The now largely defunct Medellin drug cartel in Colombia at one time joined with Russian and Italian mobsters to smuggle cocaine into Europe. In addition to conspiring with one another, crime groups also often fight with one another, which can be equally disruptive to the state. The Colombian and Mexican drug-smuggling rings have clashed more with each other than they have collaborated. Rival drug dealers and suppliers battle in New York, south Florida, and many European cities.
RUSSIA. Organized-crime groups originating in Russia and areas nearby are a growing concern. There are an estimated eight thousand Russian/Eastern European/Eurasian criminal groups, 150 of which are ethnic oriented. These include Chechens, Georgians, Armenians, and Russian-ethnic Koreans. At the time of the International Crime Threat Assessment (December 2000), Russian organized-crime groups were a major force in that nation's industrial and financial sectors. Automobile manufacturing, coal mining, and oil were among the industries they had penetrated. Russian organized crime groups are believed to maintain close ties to established American criminal groups and drug-trafficking organizations. They participate in complex criminal activity such as gasoline tax fraud, cyber-security breaches, bankruptcy fraud, insurance fraud, and health care industry fraud.
Illegal Drugs
The international networks that underpin the drug trade are a complex network of drug producers, processors, traffickers, and street vendors, orchestrated by organized-crime groups—often more than one. For example, one network arranged for hashish originating in Pakistan to be transported to Mombasa, Kenya. There, it was added to a cargo of tea and reshipped to Haifa, Israel, by way of Durban, South Africa. Then the drugs went to a ship that took cargo to Constanza, Romania, every two weeks. From there, via Bratislava, Slovakia, it went to Italy, where it was sold. The head of the network was a Ugandan native who became a German citizen and worked for a Romanian company. When some of the perpetrators were apprehended in Constanza, they revealed the network.
Illegal drug trafficking is big business. No one knows precisely how much money is involved in the drug trade but it is probably in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This makes drug criminals very powerful, especially in poorer parts of the world. Governments of countries like Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia have largely been unable to significantly reduce their countries' production and export of drugs. The U.S. federal government's drug control budget for 2004 is over $12 billion, and state and local governments also spend billions of dollars fighting drugs. Drug use has mostly plateaued in the United States, but narcotics trafficking worldwide continues to grow because of increasing demand elsewhere.
Leaders of countries often view international crime, such as drug production, as domestic legal concerns. Because criminal groups are primarily concerned with making money, their political objectives, if any, may not seem significant. Leaders also can view transnational criminals, because they operate across international borders, as other countries' problems. The U.S. government has historically considered organized crime as a law enforcement issue, not a national security threat. However, the United States has become increasingly aware that international organized crime is much more than an extension of domestic crime. Highly organized illegal enterprises operate internationally, with scant regard for state boundaries. They become larger, more complex, and grow in number. They penetrate borders and operate with relative impunity in several states. Within national borders, they pollute the integrity of domestic governments. Their willingness to use violence is often more destabilizing than the activities of revolutionary or terror groups alone. In fact, there is a fine line between the two, and occasionally organized-crime groups may operate as both, or have ties to terrorist groups.
DRUGS AND TERRORISM. Steven W. Casteel, assistant administrator for intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), testified before Congress in May of 2003 about the many links between terrorist groups and drug smugglers—a phenomenon labeled narco-terrorism. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, drug money raised from the opium trade helped the fundamentalist Islamic government to support and protect Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist group. In Colombia, three revolutionary groups routinely sell or trade cocaine with international crime organizations for guns and ammunition. Casteel testified that fourteen (or 39%) of the State Department's current list of thirty-six designated foreign terrorist organizations are connected in some way with the drug trade.
Money Laundering
Countering money-laundering efforts has taken on increased importance in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America. Money laundered through legitimate companies and nonprofit organizations has been tracked to various terrorist activities. In January 2001 the U.S. Treasury Department issued a new money-laundering guidance system. The system primarily calls for private businesses and citizens to be more aware of their banking practices and to "apply enhanced scrutiny to their private banking and similar high dollar value accounts and transactions where such accounts or transactions may involve the proceeds of corruption by senior foreign political figures, their immediate family or close associates."
This issue gained increasing importance in late 2002, when money was believed to have been laundered for terrorist organizations through the bank of a Saudi Arabian princess. The 2003 National Money Laundering Strategy (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2003) reported that since 2001 "over 315 terrorist related entities have been designated and over $136 million in assets frozen." In November of 2003 the prominent Muslim leader Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi was accused of laundering money through front groups he operated, including the American Muslim Council and the American Muslim Foundation, and sending the money to the Hamas and al Qaeda terrorist groups. In July 2004 seven officers of a Texas-based Muslim charity called the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were charged with providing $12.4 million to Hamas. Efforts to further tighten regulation of financial and charitable institutions around the world are a top priority for the administration of President George W. Bush. The United States is not alone in this effort. Many other nations have also taken strong measures to stop international criminal organizations and terrorists from misusing their own banking institutions. (See Table 11.1.)
The United Nations and Organized Crime
In November 2000 the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocols was enacted. The convention is aimed at creating greater international cooperation against criminal organizations operating across national boundaries. Member states that ratify the convention agree to mutual legal assistance, extradition, law-enforcement cooperation, and technical assistance and training. Among the specific crimes addressed in the convention are money laundering and the smuggling of migrants.
The U.S. Response to Transnational Crime
The United States has adopted widely publicized policies for countering transnational threats such as terrorism and organized crime. These include Presidential Directive 62, signed in May 1998, which establishes a systematic approach to counterterrorism. An International Crime Control Strategy has also been created. Each year, a U.S. National Drug Control Strategy is adopted. Other legislative steps undertaken by the U.S. Congress to counter various transnational threats include: the 2001 USA Patriot Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"), the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, the Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act of 1998, and the Controlled Substances Trafficking Prohibition Act of 1998. The challenge now is to implement these strategies effectively.
In response to international crime, the FBI has three distinct strategies: first, provide an active overseas presence to establish relationships with foreign law enforcement agencies; second, train foreign law enforcement officers in both basic and advanced investigative techniques and principles to promote cooperation; and third, build an institution to help promote the rule of law in newly democratic republics, which will protect U.S. interests and citizens in these countries and bring stability to their regions.
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