Transnational Organized Criminality - Artur Victoria Research And Studies

1. ORGANIZED CRIME: An approach

Characterizing the basically the organized crime is easy because, among the specialists of the matter, there are unanimity.

However is different with the definition of the concept, because the diversity of varieties and opinions.

It becomes difficult to establish a final concept on organized crime when, on one side, because it is a multiple and renewed practice of criminal nature, unchained by groups or nets in permanent dynamic adaptation and, on the other hand, we found “users” of the same with degrees of demand conceptual and differentiated practical requirements, consonant the different pursued ends:

criminal investigation, criminal Court deterrence and the, exercise of the legislative power.

To the investigator it will interest the analysis of the organized criminal structure that intends to dismantle above all, and to the Magistrate the juridical framing - penal of the occurrences and it’s insert in the legal illustrations created by the legislator.

1.1. ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE ORGANIZED CRIME

The practice of organized criminals goes far away in time and centuries. In England, in the beginnings of the sec. – XVIII we can find an example with the case of the group controlled by Jonathan Wild that was devoted to the theft, robbery and extortion in the city of London).

Though, the organized crime of the Modern Era found their roots in the decade of 1920/30, with the Institution of the “Dry Law” (Volstead Act) in the U.S.A., that prohibited to manufacture and the consumption of alcohol - raising the emergence of groups for the smuggling in portions violently defined in territorial limits, and that were devoted á distribution and smuggling of alcoholic drinks to the U.S.A., coming of Europe and Canada.

The following decades (years, 30/40/50), these “gangs” have grown into other activities and areas equally lucrative and that, progressively, they went dominating: the illegal game; the prostitution; the extortion (“protection tax”); the infiltration in unions; the smuggling of several consumption products.
In the sixties, being devoted that that still today constitutes the main source of incomes: the great traffics, namely the traffic of drugs.

During the last 70 years, the organized crime came to specializations - if stabilizing their fields and acting methods, developing true “multinational crime ” with structures and action power that crossed the national borders.

Nowadays, in an almost instinctive way, the organized crime formed groups of “Mafia” or to terrorist groups – not only because they will represent the maximum exponent of organized criminal expression, but they still constitute phenomena in mediatic terms always eagerly advertised in the news and object of deep interest of the media.

1.2 CLASSIFICATIONS

To classify the organized criminality into two great categories, having as differentiating criteria the motivations and purposes pursued by their action:

- With motivations and purposes of profit
- With motivations and dominant purposes of political interferences.

For the located groups in the first of the categories above referred, the organized and fundamentally crime is a great business, while for the second one the practices of organized crime is an expression and form for a fundamental combat.
In these to groups, always there is confluences and inter penetration of interests and objectives - tactical and/or strategic, occasional or temporary.

Example of this assertion is the so called “NARCOTERRORISM". In several countries of Latin America the drug dealers, for best implant, they protect their acts and maneuver field, they pursue and they violently press the political power and rulers, through terrorists actions.

1.3. SPECIFIC CHARACTERIZATION

In the multiple criminal expressions of the organized crime is easy to find some common denominators:

- Structure
- Financing
- Safety
- Operational development

1.3.1. STRUCTURE

The criminality type structures - if in an organized way, according to horizontal and vertical vectors.

The organization degree and complexity of a criminal structure had depended, among other factors, of the dimension ( number of members, action and territory), covering level (for-legal) and of the kind of activity of each organization.

To structure-type of a criminality group is frequently organized by the "Pyramid": a narrow "top" and an enlarged "base", graphically meaning, on one side, the numeric distribution of the members of the group and, on the other hand, their level of responsibility and involvement in the same.

This net of organized crime is distributed, for four levels, corresponding the level:

1 - the LEADERSHIP, with leadership capacity and strategic decision of the group activity and composed by a small number of individuals.

2 – To the levels 2, 3, and 4

it corresponds the activity of BIG, MEDIUM and SMALL traffic. The degree and responsibility in the net are going lessening the measure that we went down in the "Pyramid" and that, simultaneously, they enlarge number of the members implicated in the criminal tasks.

The level of leadership of an organized net in the drugs traffic and, is a complex structure, given to have to lead the correct linkage of tasks that, although is structurally related with traffic of the product, they are previous or subsequent, implemented in the production, transport, storage and distribution of the product and juridical covering - legal of all of the activities.

Comparing and analyzing the "structure-type" of three different, but representative, expressions of the organized crime:

- South American "cartel" that is devoted to the cocaine traffic;
- I group mobster (it "Cosa Nostra") Italian;
- I group terrorist (urban) European.

In spite of the motivations and final purposes of these three groups of organized crime they be several - the first two seek, through their practices of several illicit, with preponderance for the drugs dealing, an economical purpose, the third seek fundamentally the subversion and political confrontation - institutional with the State - in the respective structure-type we can identify lines common :

- Cellular organization of pyramidal type - in other words, the largest knowledge of the net works in the direct reason of the importance of the place that is in charge of in the same. A member at the level of the "base" ignores the global dimension of the organization, situation that is hidden by the leaders of the same.

- Existence of several "hierarchical" levels of action and responsibility. In this aspect, the structure of the it "Cosa Nostra" is paradigmatic and "selected", by getting strength for decades, while organization and it exalts territorial partition of action (neighborhood). In mostly of the terrorist groups, is also present the definition of levels of decision and acting.

1.3.2. SECURITY

The degree of effectiveness and stability of a criminal organization it depends by the resource to mechanisms of safety, required at the level of it’ activity and at the level of the internal operation.

A)

To the level of the preparation and execution of the activity is pointed out the use of the following methodologies:

- To collect information systematically about the enemy (structures policemen: organization, methods and tactics) on competitors (other criminal organizations), on the collaborators, on their activity areas and on the "market".
The use of specialized techniques, as surveillance (for technical and human means), the corruption and the infiltration;

- Use of static measures (protection) and active measures (detection and deception) of counterintelligence;

- Use of sophisticated systems of communications.

B)

At the level of the internal regulation of the organization, the following proceeds:

- Surveillance and "hierarchical" control of the members;
- Adoption of codes of conduct;
- Drastic measures to put discipline on the members that have broken the established rules of conduct, reinforced by coercion, measures and threats on those that try violate the rules, namely when they go out of the group;
- Rewards to members that stand out for the effectiveness in action and/or loyalty to the organization;
- Mutual attendance to the members (and their relatives) in difficult moments as, for instance, in the detention, in the prison or in the accessibility to good lawyers.

Like this, for they haul of the element Structures - dictating that the relationships between the base and the top of the organization are not, direct, but filtered by the intermediate hierarchy - also the element Safety, through the methodologies behind enunciated, they are a common component and characterizing the organized criminality.

1.3.3. FUNDS RAISING

Any organization, legal or illicit, has high costs, fixed and variables, for the operations, needing money for the development of their activities.

In general terms, in the world of the organized crime the liquidity of money is one of the main concerns.

The illegal activities carried out by the sub-world of the organized crime generates, for system, with more or less frequency, bulky monetary affluences to the criminal organizations, being the level national or transnational.

International organisms have, for instance, dear that the groups mobsters" activities generated, in the year of 1992, incomes in about a thousand million U.S.D in Hungary, 2 to 3,5 thousands millions in the U.S.A., 3 thousand million of stories in the space of E.U., 5 thousands millions in Japan.

From where are these incomes?

Of illegal activities as drugs traffic, weapons black market sells, exploration of the " protection payments" ("racket", extortion), of the exploration of contracts in public construction buildings or structures, from smuggling of several products, from gambling, among others.

Also there is a group of legal activities as businesses involving companies, casinos, financial institutions . They to do the wealth and money to circulate and somehow to justify the incomes obtained by the organizations in an illicit way. It is the camouflage methodology.

Still, the structures of organized crime stops the legal control and they explore a "black market" (national or transnational), illicit, that it allows the change of a wide variety of products and services: forged money for drug, weapons for nuclear technology, cocaine, heroine, and others But they also explore the finance market legally instituted, namely for consummation of their second financing methodology: the money laundry.

For money laundry is understood that each group realize operations, mainly financial that consist of moving away the obtained wealth from the original illegal source, turning it "clean", to the eyes of society, monetary masses of money that, in the origin, are "dirty", because they were obtained by an illicit way. As example, the "Cartel of Cali" that, in ended in the eighties, it whitened 57 million dollars - of which 36 million were in Europe - through the creation of countless ghost - societies and of consecutive movements of deposits in 268 braches in 118 banks of Europe, U.S.A. and Panama).

This amount is capable to be (reverse) invested, without any suspicions, in any economic or commercial industrial or financial activities of the current market, working the criminal organizations then as true business "empires."

Like this, the camouflage activities (regarding not only persons, but also business) and the money laundry (that refers, normally about 30 to 50% of the global incomes obtained by the organization) as a result of multiple other previous illegal activities, always generators (also) of incomes, they represent another of the aspects more significantly common of the organized criminality, in covered financing.