#1 Research Paper: Human Trafficking

1 Transnational Organized Crime Networks Across the World

Jan van Dijk

Toine Spapens

Introduction

This chapter discusses the network perspective on transnational organized crime (TOC). A distinct feature of transnational crime networks is that they complete parts of the “criminal business processes” in different countries. In the case of ecstasy, for example, the chain may involve Dutch producers who procure precursor chemicals from China and Germany, manufacture the pills in the Netherlands and Belgium, export the product to Australia, and launder the money in the Virgin Islands. Cross-border illegal activities require coordinated actions by individuals and groups, sometimes from all over the world, sometimes just from neighboring countries.

The network perspective on organized crime emerged in the 1990s (Kleemans, Brienen, & Van de Bunt, 2002; Kleemans, Van den Berg, & Van de Bunt, 1998; Klerks, 2001; Sparrow, 1991). Its main argument is that most organized crime groups are loosely knit collectives with constantly shifting members instead of the well-organized and hierarchically structured “firms” as depicted by, for instance, Donald Cressey (1969). We may therefore view transnational crime networks as collectives of criminals based in different countries who maintain criminal relations.

We first discuss the network perspective on organized crime and present a typology of criminal networks. Then we give an overview of the extent of organized crime in different parts of the world, using a composite index of social indicators of organized crime activities. We use country scores on this index for a quantitative analysis of the impact of institutional controls on the extent of organized crime in individual countries. Next, we elaborate on the concept of transnational crime networks. In the final section, we critically examine the popular notion of Western policymakers that globalization processes allow criminal firms originating from individual countries to expand their criminal activities across the world. The chapter ends with some conclusions regarding the likelihood of such criminal globalization.

Criminal Groups as Networks

Criminologists use the network perspective for mapping crime groups such as narcotics supply networks, youth gangs, and terrorist networks (see McGloin & Nguyen, 2011; Sageman, 2008). Recent network studies on organized crime for example concerned the Hells Angels in Canada (Morselli, 2009), the Italian mafia (Calderoni, 2011; Campana, 2011), and from a historical perspective, the Al Capone organization (Papachristos & Smith, 2011).

The focal point of these studies is predominantly the criminal group because limited availability of data and the lack of suitable analysis software led researchers to focus on relatively small networks. Although a lack of access to primary data, most notably police investigations, continues to be a problem, technical analysis tools have improved considerably. The recent study of the Al Capone organization, for example, included 1,500 persons and 6,000 different connections among them. Social network analysis of crime groups has proved to be a useful tool for describing criminal networks and for understanding the various roles of their members. Police analysts use similar techniques for mapping crime groups under investigation, for instance, by using Analyst Notebook or comparable software.

The term network organization usually refers to horizontal organizations with few hierarchical levels and a high degree of flexibility in both internal and external relations. In 2002, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) collected data on 40 groups from 16 countries, including the United States, Africa, and Russia. The groups analyzed were seen as representative of their countries by national experts. The researchers distinguished five different types of networks (UNODC, 2002b; van Dijk, Shaw, & Buscaglia, 2002). Their typology includes the following:

· – The criminal network (defined by the activities of key members, prominence in network determined by position and skills, personal loyalties primarily important, coalescence around criminal projects, low public profile, network reforms after exit of key individuals). A Dutch network of drug smugglers and a Nigerian network involved in different types of crimes were examples of such groups included in the sample.

· – The standard rigid hierarchy (single leader, clearly defined hierarchy, strong system of internal discipline, often strong social or ethnic identity, violence essential to activities, influence or control over defined territory). Examples of such groups originated from Italy, China, Colombia, and Eastern Europe. They make up a third of the 40 groups.

· – The regional hierarchy (single leadership structure, line of command from center, degree of autonomy at regional level, geographic/regional distribution, multiple activities, often strong social or ethnic identity, violence essential to activities). A notable example of such groups are outlaw motorcycle gangs such as the Hells Angels with chapters in different countries.

· – The clustered hierarchy (number of criminal groups, governing arrangement for the groups present, cluster has stronger identity than constituent groups, degree of autonomy for constituent groups, formation strongly linked to social/historical context, relatively rare). An example of such a group is the “28s prison gang” of South Africa.

· – The core group (core group surrounded by loose network, limited number of individuals, tightly organized flat structure, small size maintains internal discipline, seldom has social or ethnic identity). An example was a Dutch group involved in the trafficking of persons.

· The UNODC researchers have collected further data on the secondary characteristics of the networks/groups (van Dijk et al., 2002). The results showed that most groups operate across borders. Of the groups, 70% carried out criminal activities in three or more different countries. Many even operated in five or more. Most are involved in multiple criminal activities. Of the 40 groups analyzed, 30 used corruption and 33 routinely employed violence. Of the 40 cases, 30 showed evidence of the investment of profits from illegitimate activities in legitimate business activity. These results suggest that organized crime groups in most parts of the world are indeed operating in more than one country.

· The results also show that only a minority of these groups is structured as the rigid hierarchy described by Cressey in his early assessment of the mafia in the United States (Cressey, 1969). Cressey claimed that organized crime in the United States consisted mainly of a nationwide alliance of 24 tightly knit criminal mafia “families” led by capos (bosses) who commanded “soldiers,” “buffers,” and “button men” and were advised by consiglieres.

· An important question is what determines the structure of a criminal network; criminologists assume that the (political) context in which criminal networks operate is an important factor. Mafia-type syndicates, which are large and often structured as standard or clustered hierarchies, seem to have developed, and may still thrive, in countries where state authority is weak, corruption levels are high, and consequently, enforcement is lax (cf. Paoli, 2011; Paoli, Greenfield, & Reuter, 2009). In such circumstances, dominant criminal groups may even develop into an alternative for the state, by offering protection to citizens (Gambetta, 1993; Varese, 2001). According to Paoli (2011), Italian government authorities came to terms with the representatives of mafia power until at least up to the mid-20th century. They delegated to the latter the maintenance of public order over wide areas of western Sicily and southern Calabria, where the authority of the central government was scarce and even the personal safety of state officials was in danger. Mafia-type organizations also prevail in Russia and Mexico (Fijnaut & Paoli, 2004; Gonzalez-Ruiz, 2001). In Eastern Europe (e.g., Bulgaria and Albania), a limited number of major criminal groups seem to monopolize criminal activities in certain areas (Bezlov, 2005). The main criminal organizations in these countries are fairly stable, and their territories are known to the public.

· In most other parts of the world, the organized crime scene seems to be in a state of flux. Crime networks tend to be relatively small and decentralized to cope better with the risk of apprehension and prosecution. Most notably in Colombia the notoriously powerful Cali and Medellín cartels have since long been disbanded and superseded by hundreds of smaller, more flexible, and more sophisticated cocaine-trafficking organizations. We can see this transformation at least partly as an adaptation to the gradual improvement of law enforcement and adjudication by the courts. Much of the organized crime, including smuggling of migrants, in mainland China seems also in the hands of small to medium-sized, locally active groups that do not fit the traditional concept of the highly organized ‘triad” (Zhang, 2001; Zhang & Chin, 2001). According to the researchers, the use of violence against customers during transportation or in countries of destination is rare because this could hamper future activities in their geographically limited recruitment areas back home. Nigerian organized crime is highly improvised and has therefore even been characterized as “disorganized organized crime” (Shaw, 2002).

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Analyzing Organized Crime and Its Determinants with the Use of Statistical Indicators

The U.N. 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime urges member states to collect and share information on trends in organized crime. Around the turn of the last century, various attempts were made by international organizations such as Europol and Interpol to quantify the number of groups involved in organized crime per country. This counting of the most prominent organized crime groups was predicated on the notion that organized crime is mainly the work of stable and hierarchically structured groups known to law enforcement agencies. As explained earlier, this notion now seems dubious in most parts of the world where small and constantly changing networks seem to be dominant. The diversity and flexibility of criminal networks complicate attempts at counting their numbers as a way of measuring their prevalence. In one Europol study in the 1990s, for example, the Italian authorities listed only 4 criminal groups in the country whereas the Netherlands counted 600 different groups. This was a clear indication of methodological and definition problems, and the counting exercise was subsequently abolished.

An alternative approach, more in line with the social network perspective, is the construction of social indicators of organized crime activities rather than of groups. In an explorative study on organized crime indicators—or “mafia markers”—van Dijk has collected statistics on each of the main defining elements of organized crime (van Dijk, 2008). Although definitions in national legislation show great variation, criminologists as well as the international law enforcement community describe organized crime as criminal activities for material benefit by groups that engage in extreme violence, corruption of public officials, including law enforcement and judicial officers, penetration of the legitimate economy (e.g., through racketeering and money laundering), and interference in the political process.

One of the most common activities of organized crime is racketeering, including the collection of protection money from businesses. Since 1997, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has carried out annual surveys among business executives of larger companies to identify obstacles to businesses, which includes a question on the prevalence in the country of organized crime defined as “mafia-oriented racketeering, extortion” (WEF, 2004).

Another source of cross-national data on perceived organized crime is risk assessments made by international business consultancy companies. The London-based consultancy company Merchant International Group (MIG) assesses investment risks in over 150 countries, including the prevalence of different types of organized crime (MIG, 2004). The risk assessments concerning organized crime from MIG were found to be strongly correlated to the perceptions of business executives of the WEF surveys. To facilitate further statistical exploration, a composite index was constructed based on the averaged rankings of countries on the WEF surveys of 1997 to 2003 (WEF, 2004) and the assessments of organized crime prevalence of MIG. The resulting index refers to the level of different types of organized crime activities, such as extortion and drugs, arms, and people trafficking, as perceived by potential victim groups and/or independent experts.

As mentioned earlier, instrumental violence, corruption of public officials, and money laundering are regarded as other defining characteristics of organized crime. It is indeed hard to imagine a country where organized crime is rampant without significant amounts of these mafia-related phenomena. Statistical indicators were selected for the prevalence of each of these three defining characteristics of organized crime as well. Police-recorded homicides divide roughly into emotional attacks on intimates and cool-blooded killings executed by organized crime. The perpetrators of the first category are in most cases arrested. The perpetrators of the second category are not. To develop a proxy measure of “mob-related violence,” rates of unsolved homicides were calculated by deducting numbers of convictions for homicide from the numbers of police-recorded homicides. The resulting country rates of unsolved murders per 100,000 population were found to be fairly strongly correlated to the perceptions of organized crime, just mentioned. Similarly, a proxy indicator of “high-level corruption’’ was derived from studies of the World Bank Institute and indicators of money laundering and the extent of the black economy were taken from the WEF surveys among business executives. All three indicators proved to be strongly correlated to the others. These findings support the construction of a composite organized crime index combining the five interrelated proxy indicators: perceived prevalence of organized crime, especially racketeering; unsolved homicides; grand corruption; money laundering; and the extent of the black economy.

Table 1.1 depicts the mean scores on the Composite Organized Crime Index (COCI) of world regions. To allow a more detailed diagnosis of regional problems with organized crime, the table presents both the absolute scores of regions on the composite index as well as the rank numbers on the five source indicators used.

As can be seen in Table 1.1, organized crime was least prevalent in Oceania (mainly Australia and New Zealand) and most prevalent in Central Asia and the Caribbean. The ranking of regions according to the composite index and those according to the five constituting indicators show a high degree of consistency. Outliers are the relatively high rank numbers on informal sector and money laundering of Central America. Among the high-crime regions, South Africa shows surprisingly low rank numbers on homicides. The latter result could reflect that organized crime groups in the region, which tend to be highly flexible and fluent, are less prone to the use of extreme violence than groups in, for example, Eastern Europe.

The combination of data from different sources allows the calculation of scores for a large number of individual countries. In Asia, rates are the worst in parts of South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh), but China and India are also rated unfavorably (even more than Italy with its notorious problems in the southern part of the country). In the international literature on organized crime, India is rarely the focus of attention. Research on Chinese organized crime mainly focuses on Chinese expatriates. Limited available research findings on homeland China point to collusion between corrupt communist party members and local gangs in remote areas (Zhang, 2001).

In Africa, Nigeria, Angola, and Mozambique stand out with the highest scores. Nigerian organized crime activity in both the country and the region has been well documented (UNODC, 2005). Gastrow (2003) gives a detailed account of how organized crime threatens to penetrate state and businesses in Southern Africa, notably in Mozambique. In Latin America, Haiti, Paraguay, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Colombia show the highest scores. High scores are also observed in Jamaica. Within Europe, organized crime prevalence increases diagonally from the Northwest to the Southeast, with levels being low in England and Germany, higher in Spain and Italy, and by far the highest in Russia, Albania, and Ukraine.

The surveys of the World Economic Forum from 2003 to 2010 on one hand indicate incremental improvements in some of the new member states of the European Union such as Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, as well as in Russia and Georgia (World Economic Forum, 2012). On the other, the situation in Central America, most notably in Mexico, is worsening. It is also in Central America that statistics on homicides have been on the rise, in contrast to most other world regions (Alvazzi del Frate & Mugellini, 2012). The latter finding confirms the close link between trends in organized crime and lethal violence.

Organized Crime and Institutional Controls

The metrics on organized crime prevalence across regions and countries presented previously allow us to put to the test the hypothesis of criminologists that high levels of organized crime controlled by large-scale pyramid-type criminal groups tend to flourish in countries where state institutions are weak. Statistical analyses have confirmed the link between institutional failure and organized crime. The results revealed a strong link between a composite measure of police performance and the index of organized crime (van Dijk, 2008). Where police forces operate more professionally, levels of organized crime tend to remain relatively modest. A telling example is the near total elimination of organized crime in Georgia after the enactment of new legislation and the establishment of an antimafia department in the national police around 2008 (van Dijk & Chanturia, 2012). Case histories have revealed the crucial role of independent and competent prosecution services and judiciaries in tackling organized crime and corruption (Joly, 2003).

SOURCE: World Economic Forum, Global Competitiveness Reports, 1997–1998 to 2003–2004 (see WEF, 2004); Merchant International Group (2004); World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1996); UNODC (2002a); Buscaglia and van Dijk (2003).

The relationship between the rule of law, including perceived independence of the judiciary, and the level of organized crime therefore also deserves attention. For this purpose, we used a composite measure of the rule of law developed by the World Bank Institute (Kaufmann, Kraay, & Mastruzzi, 2003). Figure 1.1 shows the relationship between country values on this index of the rule of law and our composite index indicating country levels of organized crime. The two variables were found to be strongly correlated (r = 0.79). Multivariate analyses confirmed the relationship between the measure of judicial independence and levels of organized crime (Buscaglia & van Dijk, 2003; Sung, 2004). The critical factor determining the extent of organized crime is the quality of institutions responsible for the rule of law, including competent police services and independent courts complying with standards of professional integrity. These results signify that weak criminal justice systems promote levels of organized crime at the country level. We rarely observe high levels of organized crime in countries with strong policing and effective maintenance of the rule of law.

Figure 1.1 Quality of Rule of Law (including independence of the judiciary) and Prevalence of Organized Crime (Composite Organized Crime Index) Per Country

SOURCE: van Dijk (2008); Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2003); see http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/govdata

Conceptualizing Transnational Organized Crime Networks

As mentioned earlier, scholars usually apply the network perspective to study individual crime groups (“micro networks”). However, we must not forget that such groups do not appear from out of the blue but crop up from a larger network of actors who are willing and able to contribute to one or more illegal activities. “Criminally exploitable ties” that enable them to exchange information on future illegal activities connect these individuals. Similar to social media communities such as Facebook, this network of criminal relations is theoretically a global “macro network,” because there are no regulations that prevent (potential) criminals from establishing connections (Spapens, 2006, 2010). In practice, however, it is clustered locally.

Starting from the concept of the macro network, a TOC group, or micro network, may be considered, on one hand, as a group of actors moving from one country to another to execute illegal activities. The notorious “Pink Panther gang,” a network originating from Serbia suspected to have conducted more than 100 robberies of jewelry stores in more than 20 countries, is a noteworthy example. On the other, we may view a TOC network as a (temporary) collective, or micro network, composed of a small number of members of the global macro network who live in different countries. A central leader may coordinate such a micro network from a base in one country, but it may also be a fluid-project organization where business relations instead of hierarchical ties prevail. The sections have indicated that loosely knit collectives of the latter type are more dominant than are rigidly controlled hierarchical groups. It is therefore an important question whether it has become easier to establish and maintain criminal relations across borders and to set up actual criminal business processes.

The criminal macro network comprises entrepreneurs, investors, workers, and different categories of facilitators, including technicians, accountants, and legal counselors. Crime groups consist of a mix of actors who possess the necessary qualities to complete a specific illegal activity. Afterward, the criminal relationship usually stays intact and can be used to plan new crimes.

Only rarely do individuals join criminal groups (or terrorist groups for that matter) as complete outsiders. Rather, they typically first join the macro network by establishing criminal relations with persons who are already involved in criminal acts. Prisons are very important places for (transnational) criminal networking. Detainees obviously have the proper “credentials” and track record in crime. Moreover, given the circumstances, there is ample time to develop a relationship of mutual trust. In one case, a Dutch and a German drug courier developed a friendly relation in a Spanish prison where both served a sentence. Upon release they quickly brought their former bosses into contact—a Berlin wholesale drug dealer and a Dutch importer of cocaine—which just as quickly resulted in regular shipments from the Netherlands to Germany.

The micro networks that execute an actual criminal “business process”—for example, the trafficking of 100 kilos of heroin from Turkey to the United Kingdom—may exist for only one operation. They may also develop into more stable and longer lasting organizations, particularly when cooperation remains fruitful and law enforcement does not interfere. Of course, members of micro networks usually also maintain criminal relations with other members of the macro network, with whom they are at the time not actively in business. An analysis of 48 crime groups involved in ecstasy production in the south of the Netherlands, for example, revealed many connections between the members of different groups. Although the composition of the project organizations changed constantly, the names of key indigenous criminals and their extended families stayed very much the same (Spapens, 2006).

Although the macro network is theoretically global, it is of course impossible for all actors to be in direct contact with each other. Instead, comparable to other social networks, the criminal macro network divides into geographical clusters. A first explanation for this is that business processes of organized crime mostly require unskilled labor, which is readily available nearby. Maintaining an international network for the recruitment of such coworkers serves no purpose. In most cases, international relations are of use only for criminal “entrepreneurs” looking for business partners in other countries.

A second explanation is that criminals must conceal their illegal activities, and this includes discussions of future criminal projects. For this reason, the preferred mode of communication are face-to-face meetings, either at people’s homes or at places such as shady bars and brothels; the use of telecommunication is avoided to prevent the police from listening in. Such personal meetings are, on average, less easily organized when geographical and social distances increase. Of course, upper level criminal entrepreneurs will readily travel to another continent to discuss a concrete business deal, but flying all over the world just for networking is another matter. In addition, international criminal networking requires language skills, which not all criminal entrepreneurs possess. Language barriers and cultural differences further complicate the required establishment of trust between potential criminal partners from different countries.

Consequently, density of criminal relations is higher locally than at the international level. As mentioned previously, in the ecstasy production scene in the south of the Netherlands, many actors know each other at the local level, but only a relatively small number have the ties that enable them to engage in large international business deals (Spapens, 2006). The result of this is that most TOC that involves the trafficking of goods and persons is “glocal.” It concerns entrepreneurs striking international deals who usually depend on local accomplices to execute parts of the criminal business processes.

Following from our assumption that most TOC starts with establishing an international criminal relation, ongoing globalization has obviously made it easier to form and maintain such ties than it was two or three decades ago. For example, international hubs for lawbreakers developed. Many Dutch criminals, for example, bought a house or an apartment in a sunny place, such as a Spanish costa, one of the islands in the Dutch Antilles, or, more recently, in Dubai and Thailand, and fly there every few months to relax. Some towns, such as Marbella in the 1990s, thus developed into meeting places for criminals from different countries with many opportunities for networking.

Globalization also made it easier to execute cross-border illegal business processes. This first applies to the trafficking of illegal goods and contraband. The growth of international trade has increased opportunities to conceal such goods. A container filled with used tires that ships from Rotterdam to Accra, for instance, will not attract special attention, and criminals may use it to also transport some stolen car parts. It has also become less complex and cheaper for traffickers to move across the world. There is little in the way of drug couriers who travel by air from South America to Europe, for example, to take extensive detours on their way in order to hide where their journey started. Furthermore, increasing mobility also made it easier for itinerary crime groups to move around and expand their hunting grounds. We already mentioned the Serbian Pink Panther gang. A few years ago the Amsterdam police, for example, apprehended a group of Brazilians who had come over to the Netherlands solely for committing burglaries.

The Internet has opened up new opportunities for organized crime networks to operate across borders without physically crossing them—for instance, by offering illegal services or by committing fraud and theft (Aas, 2007). One example is an illegal sports betting ring in the United States, run by the Gambino “family” in which the group had partly replaced the traditional street bookmakers with websites that gamblers could enter with a password in order to place their bets (“Gambino Captain,” 2008). Online gambling also globalized match fixing. Gamblers may now wager on practically every sports event in the world, even amateur matches, and the risk that someone may find it favorable to manipulate the outcome of a game has grown accordingly. Other examples of new opportunities created by the Internet are the theft of identities and the stealing of credit card information.

Although criminals have always succeeded in operating across borders, increased globalization has unmistakably influenced TOC. In sum, more crimes now have an international dimension, even common crimes; more crime groups are operating across borders; the diversity of transnational crime networks has increased; and new transnational crimes have emerged whereas others were “modernized” because of improvements in information and communication technology. The question remains whether such developments imply that TOC groups originating from one country are introducing new types of crime and (violent) modes of operation to countries that did not have a substantial organized crime problem before.

Do TOC Networks Spread Across the World?

The most important perceived threat of TOC networks is the risk of organized crime syndicates spreading their wings across the globe and turning into crime multinationals (see Castells, 1998; Strange, 1996; United Nations, 2004; Williams, 2003; Woodiwiss, 2003). Criminal conglomerates operating globally from safe havens where controls are weak are often presented as destabilizing factors, a threat to the national security of Western nations, and a worry for authorities (Godson, 2003; UNODC, 2010). These notions of an “alien conspiracy” have powerful policy implications, engendering a discourse on the need not just of international cooperation in criminal justice but of a harsh, warfare-like approach similar and linked to the “war on terrorism” (Findlay, 2008; van Dijk, 2012). We examine the validity of these notions and the resulting political concerns from the perspective of social network theory.

Theoretically, foreign crime groups could undermine other societies in three basic ways: by moving to another country to provide additional illegal goods and services or take over the markets of existing providers; by setting up shop abroad for the purpose of committing predatory crimes, including extortion; and by investing “black” money (i.e., money from crime that has not yet been laundered) in legitimate economic activities in other countries. Each of these threats involves the movement of activities of existing criminal networks to other countries. To what extent such export of criminal activity actually takes place is difficult to assess. The mere presence of foreign criminals, however, is by itself no evidence of expansion into other countries.

The police, for example, may establish that the leader of a group of Chinese criminals operating in Europe regularly flies to Hong Kong. Does this mean that he is going there to talk with his Triad bosses to receive “orders,” or is he independently running his illegal activities and traveling there just to meet his business partners? The police will usually be inclined to assume the first, but of course, it is impossible to establish whether that is correct.

In practical cases not involving itinerary gangs, we always observe connections with the local underworld when foreign criminals appear on the scene. An example is the Chinese “businessman” Zheyun Ye (probably an alias), who appeared out of the blue in Belgium in 2004, posing as a trader in fur clothing who sought to sponsor football clubs to market the product. His real aim, in which he was partially successful, was to fix matches in the Belgian soccer competition, so that he, and presumably others, could place large bets on the scores. Importantly, Ye immediately teamed up with a Belgian named Pietro Allatta who had served a 4-year prison term for illegal labor brokering. Allatta was connected to Carmelo Bongiorno, a notorious criminal who had been convicted for the murder of a journalist in 1994. The Belgian police arrested Zheyun Ye in 2005 after he had harassed a girl and her mother in the Brussels Hilton hotel but let him go after interrogation. He immediately fled, presumably to China and has not appeared in public since. Hence, it is also impossible to answer the question whether Ye had been working on his own or had been part of a more or less orchestrated cross-border criminal operation (Spapens, 2012). Soudijn (2006) made similar observations with regard to the “Snakeheads’” who were smuggling Chinese nationals to Europein the 1990s and the first half of the millennium. The police often believed that these operations were masterminded from China, but actual proof of this was lacking. On their turn, the Chinese police were convinced that the main organizers were operating from other countries instead!

From a theoretical perspective, it appears to be highly challenging to a criminal network to move into another country to engage in illegal markets already controlled by local crime groups. To begin with, they can expect fierce resistance because the established providers will not go “bankrupt” without a fight. Next, in countries with homogeneous populations, foreign criminals stand out, and their illegal activities may more readily attract the attention of law enforcement. Newly arrived foreigners usually lack the network relations that enable them to enter into corrupt relationships with law enforcement officers or judges.

In countries where institutions are weak and law enforcement constitutes less of a problem, the opportunities of foreign groups are not favorable either. Here, the absence of functioning institutions is often more than offset by the presence of powerful, hierarchically structured criminal networks used to defend their monopolies with the use of violence. Finally, we may view the investment of illegally acquired assets abroad, either in legal businesses or in illegal activities, as a specific threat. Although there is little information from a scholarly perspective, examples show that knowledge of the local situation and good contacts on the ground seem to be prerequisites when criminals invest in legal businesses or property abroad. When it comes to investment in illegal activities, we may once again assume that criminal relations are the key to success. In practice, foreign groups providing illegal goods or services almost always enter into mutually profitable partnerships with local criminals and use their network for executing illegal activities abroad.

With regard to predatory crimes, however, the situation may sometimes be different, for these do not require local partners and do not necessarily threaten the business of the existing local networks. Examples of this are the extortion of Chinese shopkeepers in the Netherlands by a Chinese group and of Italian nationals in, for instance, Australia and Canada by the ‘Ndrangheta, a criminal organization in Italy (Forgione, 2009; Gratteri & Nicasso, 2007). However, if such groups expand their activities to other markets, they establish criminal relations with local lawbreakers. Albanian crime networks that started to appear in Belgium in the mid-1990s are an example. At first, these groups focused on committing predatory crimes, such as theft and burglary (Farcy, 2002). Within a few years after their arrival, they also started to traffic narcotic drugs and smuggle Eastern European immigrants in cooperation with local crime groups. The aforementioned group that extorted Chinese nationals living in the Netherlands also smuggled immigrants and was involved in ecstasy production and trafficking, in which cases they cooperated closely with Dutch criminals. The establishment of new criminal relations also implied that ethnic homogeneity of both the Albanian and Chinese networks soon decreased.

Conclusion

In conclusion, globalization of both economical and social relations, through migration, increasing mobility, and the revolution in information and communication technology, has offered unprecedented opportunities for TOC. It is now definitely easier to establish and maintain cross-border criminal relations, to commit predatory crimes over larger distances and to carry out certain illegal activities on the Internet, such as fraud and illegal gambling. However, we must not overrate the effects of globalization on the criminal world. It is not sensible for a crime organization from another country to try to put established local criminal “communities” out of business. In practice, cooperation with local criminals and joint ventures instead of competing with them remains to be an essential ingredient for success. Organized crime seems to have become more transnational under the influence of globalization but not to have lost its strong social roots in local settings (Hobbs, 1998). In the fight against TOC, international cooperation is most certainly required, but the fight should continue to be framed primarily as a domestic law enforcement concern that requires a coordinated response rather than as an external or global threat to national security.