Organized Crime Funding and Operational Development - A Study by Artur Victoria

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.

OPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The inherent common denominators THE STRUCTURE, SAFETY and FINANCING of the criminal organizations already allowed characterizing the organized criminality.
Still in relationship to a large part of the organized crime (except partly, the terrorist organizations), we can find another common element: the type of Operational Development.
The Operational Development of the activities of organized criminality settles down, usually, according to the following vectors:
a) Extent of national, international and transnational action;
b) Permanent Operational and stabilized, with concerns of tactics and of strategic order;
c) Conjugation of legal businesses and illicit businesses;
d) Chronological Interface and multiple accomplishments of crimes.

The operational development of the organized criminality has these factors.

a) - the reason of being of this criminality type is inside the enlarged extent of territorial activity and permanent organization and stabilized in the prosecution of the criminal activities;
b) - the reason of effectiveness of the organizations, for besides the execution of their objectives I (namely, the economical profits), is into in their flexibility face the deterrent circumstances, in dynamics of tactical and strategic articulation in the capacity of dissimulation of the illicit financing sources (illicit businesses), through the creation and maintenance of licit businesses (real or simulated) that, allow to justify and to "clean" the obtained global profits.

At the level of the businesses illicit/crimes, are strategies those that, best allows the "normal" prosecution of the activities of financing of the organization. The practices of the corruption, covering, a traffic of influences and control of the authorities are usual and typical.

The organization strategically to mislead difficulties and to avoid (larger) threats to the operational development of the activities chose as tactics for the organization to obtain profit, by e.g. traffic of drugs, the extortion and kidnappings, traffic of weapons (or, now, also, the one of nuclear products), smuggling, among others.

The legal businesses more "sought" by the criminal organizations are spread in several sectors, as: the finance market (e.g. detention and/or participation in credit institutions, leasing societies, brokers.) and the market of capitals - preferred by excellence for practices of bulky operations of money laundry -, the casinos a, hotels, the building societies and other businesslike import - export firms (often based in taxes paradises – off - shores).

Actually, the infiltration of the organized crime in legal businesses constitutes an additional tactic for effective reduction of the risk of detection of the net, for the covering and legitimating the incomes produced that, like this, less suspicions get up as for it’s ownership. Still, the insert in activities and legitimate commercial operations, namely at the international level, offers to the criminal organizations the possibility to use the legal circulation and transport of products for part of their illicit cargo.

c) - The criminological reason of the organized crime is partially, in the multiple accomplishment of illicit and, the criminal interaction.

The operational development of the nets of organized crime give priority to the practice of multiple illicit criminal, be in the optical of safety expressed in:
- crimes of corruption;
- traffic of you influence;
- threats,;
- crimes of homicide, corporal offenses, coactions and threats,
- Drainage of incomes;
- crime of money laundry;
- falsifications ;
- Tax frauds.
In another perspective, for the great majority of the criminal organizations, in their practices have a permanent and stabilized type of crimes, as for instance drugs smuggling associating in the operational development with traffic of weapons, stolen cars, and technological components.