TENTH UNITED NATIONS CONGRESS ON THE PREVENTION OF CRIME AND THE TREATMENT OF OFFENDERS
Press Kit
Backgrounder No1
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Fighting Transnational Organized Crime |
In the new global age, borders have opened up, trade barriers have fallen and information speeds around the world at the touch of a button. Business is booming -and so is transnational organized crime.
Fortunes are being made from drug trafficking, prostitution, illegal firearms and a host of other cross-border crimes. Every year, organized criminals launder huge amounts of money in illegal proceeds.
"Never before has there been so much economic opportunity for so many people. And never before has there been so much opportunity for criminal organizations to exploit the system", said Pino Arlacchi, Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP).
Once viewed as a local or at most a regional threat, organized crime has become a highly sophisticated transnational affair. As the United Nations 1999 Global Report on Crime and Justice notes: "From the perspective of organized crime in the 1990s, Al Capone was a small-time hoodlum with restricted horizons, limited ambitions and merely a local fiefdom."
Nations have now agreed that international cooperation is urgently needed to curb this growing menace. The problem will be high on the agenda at the Tenth Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, to held in Vienna, 10-17 April.
Delegates will also review progress on the draft United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, along with its three protocols to combat trafficking in illegal firearms and persons, especially women and children, as well as the smuggling of migrants (see Fact Sheet No.1).
Mimicking "legal" business
Large criminal groups may mimic legitimate business by striking multinational alliances to extend their reach and push up profits. The Hong Kong -- based Triads and the Japanese Yakuza market synthetic drugs and traffic in women and children for sexual slavery on a global scale. According to Colombia's National Police, the country's powerful drug cartels are "dealing" with the Russian Mafia and Eastern European crime groups.
As in legitimate business, larger criminal groups may diversify into a wide range of "commodities", using the same routes, networks and even corrupt officials to move people or goods. One of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world -- the Japanese Yakuza -- traffics drugs, runs prostitution rings, engages in gun smuggling and specializes in corruption, according to United Nations sources.
Also, just as legitimate companies move in to fill voids in the product market, new organized crime groups suddenly emerge where profits are to be made.
In Mexico, organized criminals have appeared who are running large-scale drug trafficking rings, a criminal arena monopolized by Colombian cartels in the past. According to a 1999 study by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, some 29 per cent of heroin consumed in the United States filters into the country through the hands of Mexican organized criminals.
New groups have also sprung up in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, where the end of the cold war and crumbling State control have been an open invitation to organized crime. Criminal groups have been quick to reap profits from struggling democracies, and other countries with shaky or non-existent laws, ill-equipped police forces and uncertain market forces.
Post-cold-war crime
The number of known criminal groups in Russia increased between 1990 and 1997 from 785 to an astronomical 9,000, with a combined membership of more than 100,000, according to the country's Interior Ministry. In Moscow, some 189 criminal organizations were active in 1996, of which 23 had branches abroad.
The Ministry estimates that about 40,000 Russian businesses are controlled by organized crime. Among these are law firms, banks and other businesses that can launder money. Many have global links.
Organized crime groups have also set up shop in several countries of Central Europe, where vast sums are being made in guns, prostitution, extortion, car theft, black market oil and cigarettes. The region is also a major entry point into Western Europe for heroin. And along with the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is the fastest-growing source region for trafficking in persons.
About 175,000 trafficked individuals, many of whom are women and children, leave annually from these nations for Western Europe and the United States, according to the International Organization for Migration (see New Global Treaty to Combat "Sex Slavery" of Women and Girls, DPI/2098).
Cracking down locally
Although transnational organized crime has become increasingly sophisticated, law enforcers worldwide have made some progress in rounding up ringleaders and closing networks down:
- Colombia has cracked open two enormously powerful cocaine cartels in the cities of Cali and Medellín and imprisoned their main bosses. Earnings from the export of all illicit drugs in Colombia have dropped by half -- from a record high of US$ 4 billion in 1984 to US$ 2 billion in 1996, according to a recent study.
- Law enforcers, coupled with an ambitious alternative development programme, have torn apart drug cartels in Bolivia, causing the coca economy to drop from 9.2 per cent of gross national product (GNP) a decade ago to the current 3 per cent.
- In South-East Asia, some of the most famous drug lords of the former Golden Triangle have negotiated with governments their withdrawal from the drug trade.
- In Italy, law enforcers and the public alike have banded together to crush the Mafia. The Mafia stronghold of Palermo, Sicily, reported only seven homicides and no Mafia murders in 1998, compared with 200 in 1992.
"No country can cope successfully on its own with the growth of international crime. We know that the combination of corruption, organized crime and money laundering -what is called ‘crony capitalism' -can upset political, economic and social systems", Mr. Arlacchi said.
Joining forces internationally
The international community already has major treaties in force against drug trafficking and money laundering, including the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. And in 1998, the United Nations General Assembly had a special session on drugs, where it adopted new strategies to reduce both the supply of and the demand for illicit drugs.
Over the past year, the ODCCP has launched three global programmes, which aim to help nations assess and combat corruption and trafficking in human beings as well as to collect data about organized crime worldwide.
But until now, a powerful international tool to fight all forms of transnational organized crime has been lacking. This void will soon be filled by the proposed Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its three protocols to control illegal firearms and counter trafficking in persons as well as the smuggling of migrants.
The treaty has two main goals. One is to eliminate differences among national legal systems, which have blocked mutual assistance in the past. The second is to set standards for domestic laws so that they can effectively combat organized crime (see Fact Sheet No. 1, DPI/2088/D).
The new convention also aims to tackle the root cause of transnational crime-profit. It will include strong measures that will allow law enforcers to confiscate criminal assets and crack down on money laundering. And it will call for the protection of witnesses.
"To combat transnational organized crime, a new sort of mentality must be created -one that understands and is capable of putting up organized resistance", said Mr. Arlacchi. "Above all, the international community needs to act more effectively than the criminal organizations that threaten us."s
Published by the United Nations Department
of Public Information
DPI/2088/F March 2000
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