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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