Series: The Cocaine Pipeline to Europe

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"When Mexico's drug cartels forced Columbian traffickers out of the US cocaine market, they seized control of the most coveted prize in the global drug trade. But the smartest traffickers soon began to turn elsewhere, to a market where the profits were higher, the risks were lower and the potential for growth was immense. They turned to Europe.

Today, Europe is arguably the most attractive cocaine market in the world, and its size and importance only continues to grow. This series, which is the product of field work and investigations over two years in more than 10 countries in Latin American, the Caribbean and Europe, traces the evolution of the European cocaine trade and the Latin American and European criminal networks that have shaped it."

Can Drug Regulation Help Tackle Organized Crime?
"A recent report argues that regulating illegal drugs can help governments tackle organized crime, adding to a growing number of voices calling for the decriminalization of personal drug use. But can this momentum turn into real change?

The report, by the Global Commission on Drugs, advances the idea that the illegal drug trade only benefits transnational criminal groups while the countries in which they operate suffer the consequences.

The report’s authors argue that criminal organizations take advantage of drug prohibition as they control, and profit from, every aspect of the production and distribution chain.

Link to the Full Report

EU Money Laundering Analysis Offers Lessons for Latin America
"A new report by the European police agency Europol examines why so much suspect financial activity results in so few money laundering prosecutions, and offers recommendations to improve the success rate that contain important lessons for Latin America's anti-money laundering frameworks and investigative bodies.

The report, "From Suspicion to Action – Converting financial information into greater operational impact," details how between 2006 and 2014 the European Union (EU) saw a 70 percent increase in suspicious transaction reports (STRs), the filings of suspicious activity that financial institutions and certain commercial actors are obliged to make to their country's Financial Investigation Unit (FIU).

The STRs, of which there were nearly 1 million across the EU in 2014, form the building blocks of money laundering investigations. Europol acknowledges the impossibility of accurately assessing data that is compiled and used in different ways in different countries. Nevertheless, the police body estimates that an average of just 10 percent of STRs are put to use each year.

The rate of success for investigations that begin with an STR was even lower. From 2010 to 2014, Europol found that just 2.2 percent of the estimated proceeds of crime were provisionally seized or frozen, and only 1.1 percent of criminal profits were ultimately confiscated at the EU level.

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The Impact of Organised Crime in Local Communities
"Organised crime is changing. Traditional forms of organised crime centred around drug dealing and serious acquisitive crime are being supplemented with 'new or emerging' crimes, such as modern slavery, child sexual exploitation and cyber fraud. It is now one of the government's main national priorities and new organisations at the national and regional level have been specifically set up to tackle it. However, the public view of organised crime is that while it is seen as a serious problem, it is not seen as a problem locally where they live. Since Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are required to reflect local concerns when deciding how to allocate their force's resources, organised crime therefore tends not to attract the resources it requires.

This study looks at the nature, scale and impact of organised crime on local communities. It focuses on the more hidden aspects of organised crime and how it impacts on vulnerable individuals and communities. It also looks at the modi operandi of organised crime groups (OCGs) and the local response to their offending."

Crime in the Age of Technology - Europol's Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2017
"In the SOCTA 2017, Europol highlights in particular the role of technology. Criminals have always been adept at exploiting technology. However, the rate of technological innovation and the ability of organised criminals to adapt these technologies have been increasing steadily over recent years. Developments such as the emergence of the online trade in illicit goods and services are set to result in significant shifts in criminal markets and confront law enforcement authorities with new challenges."

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More than 1 Million OxyContin Pills Ended up in the Hands of Criminals and Addicts. What the Drugmaker Knew
"In the waning days of summer in 2008, a convicted felon and his business partner leased office space on a seedy block near MacArthur Park. They set up a waiting room, hired an elderly physician and gave the place a name that sounded like an ordinary clinic: Lake Medical.

The doctor began prescribing the opioid painkiller OxyContin – in extraordinary quantities.... By December, she had prescribed more than 73,000, with a street value of nearly $6 million.

At its headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, tracked the surge in prescriptions. A sales manager went to check out the clinic and the company launched an investigation. It eventually concluded that Lake Medical was working with a corrupt pharmacy in Huntington Park to obtain large quantities of OxyContin....

Purdue did not shut off the supply of highly addictive OxyContin and did not tell authorities what it knew about Lake Medical until several years later when the clinic was out of business and its leaders indicted.

By that time, 1.1 million pills had spilled into the hands of Armenian mobsters, the Crips gang and other criminals."

Reorganizing Crime Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia

• Looks at the phenomenon in Georgia of 'Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian), career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity originating in the 1930s from Soviet prison camps
• Poses questions surrounding criminal resilience to state attacks on organized crime and explores why the Georgian thieves-in-law had particularly weak resilience
• Based on extensive fieldwork and utilizing unique access to primary sources of data such as police files, court cases, archives and expert interviews collected over a two year period

Arising from Soviet prison camps in the 1930s, career criminals known as 'thieves-in-law' exist in one form or another throughout post-Soviet countries and have evolved into major transnational organized criminal networks since the dissolution of the USSR. Intriguingly, this criminal fraternity established a particular stronghold in the republic of Georgia where, by the 1990s, they had formed a mafia network of criminal associations that attempted to monopolize protection in both legal and illegal sectors of the economy. This saturation was to such an extent that thieves-in-law appeared to offer an alternative, and just as powerful, system of governance to the state.

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MafiaLeaks Website Lets Italians Anonymously Squeal on Organized Crime

Turns out that one episode of The Sopranos where the gang goes to Italy wasn’t exaggerating: the pasta-loving peninsula is still teeming with organized crime. And now, a new WikiLeaks-inspired website is hoping to put a dent in it.

Ten anonymous Italians created the site, according to the Daily Dot, in hopes of connecting police and journalists to people with inside knowledge about mob activity.

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