European Parliament

In July 2021, the European Commission tabled a proposal to establish a new EU authority to counter money laundering and the financing of terrorism (AMLA). This was part of a legislative package aimed at implementing the 2020 action plan for a comprehensive Union policy on preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The AMLA would be the centre of an integrated system composed of the authority itself and the national authorities with an AML/CFT supervisory mandate. It would also support EU financial intelligence units (FIUs) and establish a cooperation mechanism among them. The Council achieved a partial political agreement on the proposal on 29 June 2022. In the European Parliament, the file was referred to the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). The co-rapporteurs issued their joint report in May 2022. The joint committee report was voted on 28 March 2023 and the mandate to enter trilogues was granted by the plenary on 17 April 2023. Third edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure. The first edition was written by Carla Stamegna.

Brussels: European Parliament, 2020. 10p.

By Saša Đorđević

  Organized crime and corruption in the Western Balkans have been on the rise since the 1990s, following the war in former Yugoslavia in 1995 and the political-economic crisis triggered by the collapse of pyramid schemes in Albania in 1997. Accordingly, popular, journalistic and academic research on organized crime in these states – namely, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – has also increased. In 1996, for example, the head of Belgrade’s criminal police, Marko Nicović, published the book Droga: Carstvo zla (Drugs: Evil Empire) about the history of organized drug trade and the current fight to curtail it. In 2001, the Serbian Interior Ministry mapped and systematically identified 118 organized criminal groups for the first time in the White Book.  In 2002, journalist Jelena Bjelica wrote a study on human trafficking in Europe and the Balkans. In 2005, journalist Miloš Vasić published an in-depth profile of the Zemun Clan, which he described as one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Balkans during their heyday between 1999 and 2003. One of the first regional projects on the impact of organized crime on peace-building in the region was launched in 2006. Organized crime in the region also sparked interest among international scholars, such as Misha Glenny, who, in 2018, published McMafia, about the global rise in organized crime since the 1980s. Despite the surge in research on organized crime in the Western Balkans, the findings are still insufficient and lacking in certain respects. These works reflect three main trends of illicit economies in the Western Balkans. First, the geography of organized crime has advanced from heroin smuggling through the Balkan route to cocaine trafficking from Latin America to Western Europe, and to the region being a source of particular illicit goods such as weapons and cannabis.6 Second, the politics of illicit economies in the region has evolved from being an ecosystem of political protection for crime facilitators to organized corruption that enriches and shields those with power. Third, following the end of communism and regional wars, the lack of institutional capacity to provide tangible societal improvements resulted in only partial reforms in criminal justice systems across the region. This is despite the 1999 reforms in justice and home affairs fostered by the EU through the Stabilization and Association Process. The objective of this study prepared by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) is to systematically and strategically identify gaps in the current understanding of organized crime in the Western Balkans, and to suggest future areas of work that could help close these gaps and better understand illicit practices. This gap analysis maps existing knowledge, identifies  trends and emerging issues, and reveals the under-researched aspects of illicit economies in the region. With this approach, this study aims to better understand areas of uncertainty and initiate new studies more quickly. Identifying blind spots in the existing literature is a necessary step for creating a new research agenda, establishing strategic and funding priorities and designing research projects that can build the knowledge base, enhance analysis and contribute to evidence-based policymaking.10 Ultimately, this research agenda should aid in the prevention and disruption of organized crime both in the Western Balkans or perpetrated by criminals from the region. After first describing the methodology and data collection techniques of the gap analysis, the paper explains the scale, scope and impact of organized crime and corruption research in the Western Balkans. It then examines the main thematic focus of research on organized crime in the region – namely, criminal markets, criminal actors, and the resilience of state and non-state actors to organized crime and corruption. The third part lays out recommendations and further steps to better understand and increase knowledge of the illicit economies in the Western Balkans.   

 Geneva:  The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 38p. 

By Gabriel Feltran,  Cecília Lero, Marcelli Cipriani, Janaina Maldonado, Fernando de Jesus Rodrigues, Luiz Eduardo Lopes Silva e Nido Farias

The paper proposes an explanation for the variations in homicide rates in Brazil in the past two decades. Based on the comparison of ethnographic experiences lived in the criminal universe of four capital cities (São Paulo, Porto Alegre, São Luís and Maceió), we propose two analytical strategies: 1) the breakdown of quantitative homicide rate data by victim profile, and 2) the construction of historical synopses of conflicts between factions at the local level. We demonstrate how homicide rates, in specific socio-demographic profiles, oscillate based on changes in conflicts between factions at the local level conflicts, and influence variations in the aggregate rates   

  Dilemas, Rev. Estud. Conflito Controle Soc. – Rio de Janeiro – Edição Especial no 4 – 2022 – pp. 349-386  

By Stephanie G. Stahlberg

Brazilian prison gangs have spilled out to the outside world and become criminal enterprises. The expansion of São Paulo’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Rio de Janeiro’s Comando Vermelho into all regions and most states in Brazil signifies a major security concern for the country. A third player, Família do Norte (FDN), poses a challenge to the other organized criminal groups (OCGs), especially in the North region, where the FDN fights to retain control of the lucrative drug trading route through the Amazon. Although organized crime is believed to play a significant role in the violence level in Brazil, no study has been able to measure their presence and activity levels beyond one city or state. This dissertation develops a novel methodology for tracking criminal groups, by using the number of Google searches about each OCG in a given state and year. This method creates a proxy for the OCGs' presence and activity level, which is also used to generate a competition index. The analysis shows that OCG presence by itself does not explain homicide rates well; in fact, some states with high levels of OCG activity have relatively low homicide rates. However, in combination with a highly competitive scenario, the strong presence of these groups can translate into high levels of violence. When all three OCGs are present, the homicide rate is on average five points higher than when there are fewer OCGs present. In places where there is dominance of a single OCG, violence levels are lower. Findings from the data analysis and expert interviews reveal that the homicide reduction occurs because of higher levels of criminal market monopolization and criminal governance. Powerful OCGs replace the state and regulate violence in these communities, and are strong and threatening enough to prevent the state from challenging them directly. This study shows that a decrease in the homicide rate in the presence of OCGs should not be seen as a clear success, but rather as a warning sign that criminality may be more united and stronger.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2021. 176p.

By  Vanda Felbab-Brown

  This paper explores the trends, characteristics, and changes in the Mexican criminal market, in response to internal changes, government policies, and external factors. It explores the nature of violence and criminality, the behavior of criminal groups, and the effects of government responses. • Over the past two decades, criminal violence in Mexico has become highly intense, diversified, and popularized, while the deterrence capacity of Mexican law enforcement remains critically low. The outcome is an ever more complex, multipolar, and out-of-control criminal market that generates deleterious effects on Mexican society and makes it highly challenging for the Mexican state to respond effectively. • Successive Mexican administrations have failed to sustainably reduce homicides and other violent crimes. Critically, the Mexican government has failed to rebalance power in the triangular relationship between the state, criminal groups, and society, while the Mexican population has soured on the anti-cartel project. • Since 2000, Mexico has experienced extraordinarily high drug- and crime-related violence, with the murder rate in 2017 and again in 2018 breaking previous records. • The fragmentation of Mexican criminal groups is both a purposeful and inadvertent effect of high-value targeting, which is a problematic strategy because criminal groups can replace fallen leaders more easily than insurgent or terrorist groups. The policy also disrupts leadership succession, giving rise to intense internal competition and increasingly younger leaders who lack leadership skills and feel the need to prove themselves through violence. • Focusing on the middle layer of criminal groups prevents such an easy and violent regeneration of the leadership. But the Mexican government remains   deeply challenged in middle-layer targeting due to a lack of tactical and strategic intelligence arising from corruption among Mexican law enforcement and political pressures that makes it difficult to invest the necessary time to conduct thorough investigations. • In the absence of more effective state presence and rule of law, the fragmentation of Mexican criminal groups turned a multipolar criminal market of 2006 into an ever more complex multipolar criminal market. Criminal groups lack clarity about the balance of power among them, tempting them to take over one another’s territory and engage in internecine warfare. • The Mexican crime market’s proclivity toward violence is exacerbated by the government’s inability to weed out the most violent criminal groups and send a strong message that they will be prioritized in targeting......

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2019. 29p.

Tomáš Divia, Indra Oosting, and Gerard Wolters

In this study, we investigated the relation between the different stages of women trafficking (i.e. recruitment, entrance, accommodation, labor, and finance) and the structure of five criminal networks involved in women trafficking in the Netherlands (Ns ranging from 6 to 15). On the one hand, it could be argued that for efficiency and avoidance of being detected by law enforcement agencies, the network structure might align with the different stages, resulting in a cell-structured network with collaboration between actors within rather than across stages. On the other hand, criminal actors might prefer to collaborate and rely on a few others, whom they trust in order to circumvent the lack of formal opportunities to enforce collaboration and agreements, resulting in a core-periphery network with actors also collaborating across stages. Results indicate that three of the five networks were characterized by a core-periphery structure, whereas the two other networks exhibit a mixture of both a cell-structured and core-periphery network. Furthermore, using an Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM), we found that actors were likely to form ties with each other in the stages of recruitment, accommodation, and exploitation, but not in the stages of transport and finance.

European Journal of CriminologyOnlineFirst, November 28, 2021

By The Mixed Migration Centre and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

“A Roadmap for Advocacy, Policy Development and Programming: Protection in Mixed Movements along the Central and Western Mediterranean Routes 2021” is an edited volume that presents key recommendations from more than 40 researchers, protection actors, policy-makers and people with a displacement experience from North, West, East and the Horn of Africa as well as Europe and North America, who came together in February 2021 for a Policy Workshop convened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Mixed Migration Centre (MMC). Recommendations are drawn from 25 research papers aimed at informing policy, programming and advocacy. The volume aims to be a roadmap for strategic engagement with different asylum and migration stakeholders at local, national and international levels. It offers concrete ways forward for a number of issue-areas key to the protection of people on the move: the important role of local authorities and community-based approaches to protection, the need for a stronger focus on children and youth on the move, and more sustainable approaches to combatting trafficking in persons, to name a few.

Mixed Migration Centre and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees : 2021. 132p.

By The Mixed Migration Centre

This study focuses on the protection experiences of Ethiopian nationals, travelling east out of Ethiopia via irregular overland journeys towards Saudi Arabia for labour employment. This so-called Eastern Route has been the major mixed migration route for Ethiopian irregular labour emigration for well over a decade. A limited number of Ethiopians also apply for asylum with UNHCR in Yemen but the vast majority travel on north to the Yemen/Saudi border.

Ravenstone Consult, 2023. 72p.

The Economics of Extortion: Theory and Evidence on the Sicilian Mafia

By Luigi Balletta and Andrea Lavezzi 

This paper studies extortion of firms operating in legal sectors by a profit-maximizing criminal organization. We develop a simple principal-agent model under asymmetric information to find the Mafia-optimal extortion as a function of firms' observable characteristics, namely size and sector. We test the predictions of the model on a unique dataset on extortion in Sicily, the Italian region where the most powerful criminal organization, the Mafia, operates. In line with our theoretical model, our empirical findings show that extortion is strongly concave in firm's size and highly regressive. The percentage of profits appropriated by Mafia ranges from 40% for small firms to 2% for large firms. We derive some implications of these findings on market structure and economic development.

Pisa, Italy: Dipartimento di Economia e Management – Università di Pisa, 2019. 47p.

By Yvon Dandurand, Lucia Bird Ruiz Benitez de Lugo, Kingsley Madueke and Oumar Zombre  

  State-centric approaches to building resilience to organised crime must be complemented with community-based, context-specific responses that challenge organised crime and violence at a local level. Local communities are key elements of the necessary response to the destabilising impacts of organised crime in conflict as well as post-conflict settings. There remains a gap in stakeholder understanding of the elements of community resilience to organised crime, particularly in unstable settings. This report starts to address this gap, by analysing key drivers of community resilience – identified as social capital, community capacity, the role of women, economic capital and infrastructure – in four communities in Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Burkina Faso.   

Institute for Security Studies,  2022. 44p.

By Deborah Manzi

Criminal organizations operate in complex changing environments. Being flexible and dynamic allows criminal networks not only to exploit new illicit opportunities but also to react to law enforcement attempts at disruption, enhancing the persistence of these networks over time. Most studies investigating network disruption have examined organizational structures before and after the arrests of some actors but have disregarded groups’ adaptation strategies. The present study investigated the resilience of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) to law enforcement attempts at disruption, focusing on three main aspects: the ability to endure disruption, react quickly and efficiently to threats, and keep primary functions unaltered. The analysis relied on an agent-based model (ABM) that simulates drug trafficking and dealing activities by organized criminal groups and their reactions to law enforcement attempts at disruption. The simulation relied on information retrieved from a detailed court order against a large-scale Italian DTO and from the literature. The results demonstrated that law enforcement interventions are often critical events for DTOs, with high rates of disruption. However, surviving DTOs always displayed a high level of resilience, with effective strategies in place to react to threatening events and to continue drug trafficking and dealing.

Milan: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 2023. 297p.

ByScott Duxbury and Dana L. Haynie

Physical, technological, and social networks are often at risk of intentional attack. Despite the wide-spanning importance of network vulnerability, very little is known about how criminal networks respond to attacks or whether intentional attacks affect criminal activity in the long-run. To assess criminal network responsiveness, we designed an empirically-grounded agent-based simulation using population-level network data on 16,847 illicit drug exchanges between 7,295 users of an active darknet drug market and statistical methods for simulation analysis. We consider three attack strategies: targeted attacks that delete structurally integral vertices, weak link attacks that delete large numbers of weakly connected vertices, and signal attacks that saturate the network with noisy signals. Results reveal that, while targeted attacks are effective when conducted at a large-scale, weak link and signal attacks deter more potential drug transactions and buyers when only a small portion of the network is attacked. We also find that intentional attacks affect network behavior. When networks are attacked, actors grow more cautious about forging ties, connecting less frequently and only to trustworthy alters. Operating in tandem, these two processes undermine long-term network robustness and increase network vulnerability to future attacks.

  PLoS ONE 15(9):  2020.  

By Dušan Stanković

This research focuses on the six European Union (EU) accession candidates from the Western Balkans (WB6): Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. Its objectives are to map the phenomenon and main characteristics of organized crime groups (OCGs) in the region. The analysis is based on the research of both primary and secondary data, using expert interviews, police announcements, official statistics, national SOCTA documents, etc. The study finds that OCGs from some countries such as Albania, Montenegro and Serbia developed largely international networks with 30 and more members. These OCGs represent the main actors and leaders of organized crime (OC) in the region. Other OCGs which have fewer members (from 3-4 to around 15), perform mainly on a national level or as facilitators of bigger OCGs. Male gender is the most common (in about 90% of the cases). Women are engaged in logistic activities, although there are individual cases where they are higher in the criminal group hierarchy. The age of the members can vary between 20 and 50 years old, depending on the activity and territory. The estimated average is around 35, but there are cases of members aged 65 and over. The nationalities and ethnicities of the OCGs follow the patterns of their regions, having solid bonds with their families and traditions. However, differences in background do not stop OCGs to cooperate and make criminal networks. The main criminal activities performed by the OCGs in WB6 are the illicit drug trafficking and migrant smuggling. At the same time, illegal firearms and explosives trafficking and money laundering serve as facilitators of the major activities. Less frequent crime types are organized property crimes, where smuggling of goods is the most prominent activity. Trafficking in human beings has recently been much-evoked in public, mainly by large migration going through the Balkans and creating opportunities for illegal migration and human trafficking. Still, it seems like the authorities currently do not identify big OCGs in the trafficking of human beings. In addition, cybercrime represents an incremental trend, but there also seem to be no prominent OCGs which perform it as a core activity.  

Belgrade, Serbia:  Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP), 2022. 48p.

By Alina Rocha Menocal

  This paper argues that political settlements analysis and an understanding of elite bargains need to incorporate a deeper and more systematic exploration of serious organised crime (SOC), since this affects critical elements related to the nature and quality of elite bargains and political settlements. In particular, the paper examines how SOC affects these issues – from the elites that constitute a bargain or settlement, to violence and stability, to ‘stateness’, or the extent to which a state is anchored in society, state capacity and political will, to legitimacy and electoral politics. The paper draws on insights from a rich body of research on organised crime and its impacts on conflict, violence, governance and development to articulate how SOC can be more thoroughly integrated into research focused on political settlements and/or elite bargains to enhance its analytical depth, quality and accuracy. The paper also outlines lessons and implications that may guide further reflection in conflict and development circles on the nexus between organised crime, elite bargains and political settlements from a thinking and working politically perspective.  

SOC ACE Research Paper No. 15. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham. 2022. 41p.

By Tomáš Diviák 

Objectives: Criminal networks tend to recover after a disruption, and this recovery may trigger negative unintended consequences by strengthening network cohesion. This study uses a real-world street gang network as a basis for simulating the effect of disruption and subsequent recovery on network structure.

Methods: This study utilises cohesion and centrality measures to describe the network and to simulate nine network disruptions. Stationary stochastic actor-oriented models are used to identify relational mechanisms in this network and subsequently to simulate network recovery in five scenarios.

Results: Removing the most central and the highest-ranking actors have the largest immediate impact on the network. In the long-term recovery simulation, networks become more compact (substantially so when increasing triadic closure), while the structure disintegrates when preferential attachment decreases.

Conclusion: These results indicate that the mechanisms driving network recovery are more important than the immediate impact of disruption due to network recovery.

Journal of Experimental Criminology (2023)

By Robin Cartwright and Nicholas Atampugre

The Niger Delta is a global focal point for oil crime that has devastated Nigeria's environment, land, air and water.

Niger Delta oil crime is one of the most serious natural resource crimes globally, with the systematic theft, sale and illegal refining of up to 20% of Nigeria’s oil output. Illegal bunkering and artisanal refining have increased exponentially over the past decade. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with Niger Deltan citizens, and government and community experts, to examine the impact on society. While state security forces continue to treat the crime with ‘extreme prejudice’ – destroying illegal camps and transportation – Niger Deltan citizens have normalised it, justifying it as an economic, energy and employment necessity despite its health and environmental toll.

Enact Africa, 2020. 28p.

By Christopher Hernandez-Roy and Rubi Bledsoe

A journalist recently made an apt joke about living under President Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship: “Hi, I am from Nicaragua, and I represent your future. I am living what you will be experiencing soon enough: harassment, persecution, and threats to your lives and imprisonment,” he said to a group of Northern Triangle colleagues by way of introduction. This anecdote recalls Charles Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in his 1843 novella A Christmas Tale, where the ghost portends the demise of Ebenezer Scrooge. In this context, it portends the death of democracy in the Northern Triangle, and the dire effects of democratic backsliding. Up until very recently, the conditions in Nicaragua were starkly different from its neighbors. The Ortega regime is a dictatorship that persecutes and detains opponents at will and with complete impunity. Nicaragua’s Northern Triangle neighbors have been democracies, even if imperfect ones. However, in 2019, the election of Nayib Bukele as president of El Salvador marked the beginning of a stark shift in the anti-crime strategy of the country and a turn toward authoritarian tendencies. The new leader opted to suspend constitutional guarantees and engage in mass incarceration in order to fight crime and gang violence, setting off alarm bells across the region, as concerns grew over democratic backsliding. The self-identified “coolest dictator in the world,” used his background in marketing and social media branding to propel an extreme version of mano dura, or “zero tolerance,” to fight crime. Three years later, Honduras and other countries have taken notice of the appeal of these tactics and are now replicating it, or considering it, in whole or in part. This is a slippery slope for the region and a precedent that poses a great danger to the hemisphere’s democracies.   

Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2023. 12p.

By Tom Wainwright

How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the $300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola.

And what can government learn to combat this scourge? By analyzing the cartels as companies, law enforcers might better understand how they work—and stop throwing away $100 billion a year in a futile effort to win the “war” against this global, highly organized business.

Your intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth is Tom Wainwright. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Wainwright provides a fresh, innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers.

The cast of characters includes “Bin Laden,” the Bolivian coca guide; “Old Lin,” the Salvadoran gang leader; “Starboy,” the millionaire New Zealand pill maker; and a cozy Mexican grandmother who cooks blueberry pancakes while plotting murder. Along with presidents, cops, and teenage hitmen, they explain such matters as the business purpose for head-to-toe tattoos, how gangs decide whether to compete or collude, and why cartels care a surprising amount about corporate social responsibility.

More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a blueprint for how to defeat them

NY. Public Affairs. 2016. 288p.

By Ioan Grillo

The world has watched stunned at the bloodshed in Mexico. Thirty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters and drug agents at the problem. But in secret, Washington is confused and divided about what to do. "Who are these mysterious figures tearing Mexico apart?" they wonder.

London: Bloomsbury, 2017. 250p.

By Jerry Langton

A frightening look at Mexico's new power elite-the Mexican drug cartels The members of Mexico's drug cartels are among the criminal underworld's most ambitious and ruthless entrepreneurs. Supplanting the once dominant Colombian cartels, the Mexican drug cartels are now the major distributor of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. and Canada. Not only have their drugs crossed north of the border, so have the cartels (in 2009, 230 active Mexican drug cartels have been reported in U.S. cities). In Gangland, bestselling author Jerry Langton details their frightening stranglehold on the economy and daily life of Mexico today-and what it portends for the future of Mexico and its neighbours. Offering a firsthand look from members of law enforcement, politicians, journalists, and people involved in the drug trade in Mexico and Canada, Gangland sheds a harsh light on the multibillion dollar industry that is the drug trade, the territorial wars, and the on-the-street reality for the United States, with the importation of narco-terrorists. With the unstinting realism and keen analysis that have made him an internationally respected journalist, Langton offers the bleak prospects of what a collapsed government in Mexico might lead to-a new Mexican warlord state not unlike Somalia.

NY. Harper Collins. 2011. 288p.