FT944-12173 _AN-EKBD9AGMFT 941102 FT 02 NOV 94 / FT Review of Business Books (6): Global mafia pact - The end of history is beginning to look ugly / International crime By ADAM COURTENAY 'CRIME WITHOUT FRONTIERS' By Claire Sterling Little Brown Pounds 18.99, 274 pages Everyone has heard of the growth of crime in eastern Europe since the demise of communism. Terms such as the 'Wild East' and 'Mafioski' punctuate newspaper reports of flourishing black markets and a profiteering old guard. It is an image of chaos. Most reactions are dismissive: this is the difficult transitional period leading to unfettered capital markets and private enterprise. Now that Russia is the west's friend, it is the end of history, a phrase coined in 1990 which still has currency today. Three years later, the end of history is beginning to look decidely ugly, but it is organised, not chaotic. A prostrate country lies open to the international underworld, which sets about constructing the world's biggest criminal safehouse. Crime syndicates have bought up Russia's governing class, looted its natural resources, manipulated its currency and infiltrated every sector of its economy. Russia has become a giant washing machine swapping narcodollars for roubles, a toll gate for Europe's drug trade. Crime Without Frontiers is the story of how western and eastern criminal syndicates secured the former Soviet safehouse, the last piece in constructing a global pax mafiosa. The safehouse is the size of Europe and America combined, a 'point de rencontre' from which to carve the planet into orderly spheres of corruption. In the pax mafiosa, business is business - the Chinese Triads are partners in crime with the American Mafia; the Italians use the Russians to launder for the Colombian cartels, the Japanese Yakuza work hand in hand with the Italians. Crime has come full circle. Sterling works on an underlying paradox. Where there was once legitimate East-West distrust, there is now criminal detente. On one hand are 'sensible crooks' working in dishonest harmony, on the other is lawful society 'haggling over legal jurisdiction and perpetuating a multitude of police agencies carefully keeping secrets from each other'. The use of Germany as a criminal transit point between east and west is the book's most startling case in point, a paradigm of the European Union's vulnerability to the forces of enterprise crime. The legitimate world is ripe for the taking. Germany is a victim of its own punctilious laws of privacy and data protection: phone taps and bugging are outlawed, there is no cross-fertilisation between law enforcement agencies and anti-money laundering legislation is effectively unworkable. And the EU itself? Sterling describes it as 'an epic joke' where crime fighting is concerned. The borders have been removed for crooks, but not for the cops. No two countries have the same drug laws or surveillance of pushers. There is no pooling of police information and no common extradition policy. The EU cannot even agree on harmonising police radio frequencies. In this environment, criminals choose the best countries to ship, store, market and launder their produce. Sterling's book is nothing short of remarkable in its intuitive knowledge of the workings of a new underworld order only glimpsed by the media. It explains the horrifying flipside to the freedom of movement so cherished since the almost concurrent fall of communism and the dismantling of Europe's internal barriers. Unfortunately, few have listened carefully to this flipside. Sterling says that by the time the Western powers-that-be listen hard enough, they may already have become the powers-that-were. They will be dealing with an international shadow government the likes of which has never been seen or imagined. Countries:- GBZ United Kingdom, EC. Industries:- P2731 Book Publishing. Types:- TECH Products & Product use. The Financial Times London Page VI