Organised crime, corruption, and terrorism are considered to pose significant and unrelenting threats to the integrity, security, and stability of contemporary societies. Alongside traditional criminal enforcement responses, strategies focused on following the money trail of such crimes have become increasingly prevalent. These strategies include anti-money laundering measures to prevent 'dirty money' from infiltrating the legitimate economy, proceeds of crime powers to target the accumulated assets derived from crime, and counter-terrorist financing measures to prevent 'clean' money from being used for terrorist purposes. This collection brings together 17 emerging researchers in the fields of anti-money laundering, proceeds of crime, counter-terrorist financing and corruption to offer critical analyses of contemporary anti-assets strategies and state responses to a range of financial crimes. The chapters focus on innovative anti-financial crime measures and assemblages of governance that have become a feature of late modernity and on the ways in which individual nation states have responded to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements in light of their specific social, political, and economic contexts. This collection draws on perspectives from law, criminology, sociology, politics, and other disciplines. It adopts a much-needed international approach, focusing not only on expected jurisdictions, such as the United States and United Kingdom, but also on analysis from countries such as Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, and Nigeria. The authors stand out for their fresh and original research, which places them at the cutting edge of the subject. This book provides a comprehensive, insightful, and original study of an important and developing field for academics, students, practitioners, and policymakers in multiple jurisdictions.

The perceived threat of 'transnational organised crime' to Western societies has been of huge interest to politicians, policy-makers and social scientists over the last decade. This book considers the origins of this crime, how it has been defined and measured, and the appropriateness of governments' policy responses. The contributors argue that while serious harm is often caused by transnational criminal activity - for example, trafficking in human beings - the construction of that criminal activity as an external threat obscures the origins of these crimes in the markets for illicit goods and services within the 'threatened' societies. As such, the authors question the extent to which global crime can be controlled through law enforcement initiatives and alternative policy initiatives are considered. The authors also question whether transnational organised crime will retain its place on the policy agendas of the United Nations and European Union in the wake of the 'war on terror'.

In many countries, the real estate sector is vulnerable to money laundering due to a high number of factors including; the high value of assets, price fluctuations and speculation within the market, difficulties in assessing the true value of a house, and the fact that the legal owner is not necessarily the economic owner. In this book, the authors identify a total of 25 characteristics which render a property susceptible to money laundering. The more such characteristics a property exhibits, the more suspicious it becomes. The authors also discover that some of these characteristics weigh heavier than others. Combining economic, econometric and criminological analysis, this multidisciplinary approach shows how to detect criminal investment in the real estate sector. This well-researched book will appeal to government authorities responsible for combating money laundering, international organizations such as the IMF, the UN, the Worldbank and the EU, as well as financial intelligence units in all countries. Real estate associations, real estate research centers, criminologists and economists will also find this book invaluable.

In recent years, organized crime has become endemic in the countries of southeast Europe giving rise to an urgent debate on what needs to be done to fight it. This collection of essays contributes directly to this debate. The discussions range over national and regional policies, the west European dimension of the phenomenon, and the less often discussed role that the media and civil society can play in the battle against organised crime.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure. With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds. But there was one problem: a rival in the salvage business threatened his dominance. Smith hired arsonists to destroy the rival; when they botched the job, he sent three gunmen, but the robbery they planned was a bloody fiasco. Investigators were convinced that Smith was guilty, but many were skeptical that the newly elected and inexperienced Earle could get a conviction. Amid the courtroom drama and underworld plots the book describes, Willie Nelson makes a cameo. So do the private eyes, hired guns, and madams who kept Austin not only weird but also riddled with vice. An extraordinary true story, Last Gangster in Austin paints an unusual picture of the Texas capital as a place that was wild, wonderful, and as crooked as the dirt road to paradise.

THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF THE MOST INFAMOUS STREET GANG IN AMERICA In the 1980s, El Salvador was involved in a bloody fight for control of the government. To escape the guerrilla assaults and death squads many fled to the US. As a survival instinct, they formed a group called the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners, a relatively harmless social network bound by rock and roll. But later, as they brushed against established local gangs, the group took on a harder edge, selling drugs, stealing cars and killing rivals who threatened their territories. As authorities cracked down, gang members were incarcerated and deported. But in the prison system, the group only grew stronger. Today, MS-13 is one of the most infamous street gangs on Earth, with tens of thousands of members operating in a half-dozen nations and two continents, and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year. Through the story of former gang member Norman and his family, journalist Steven Dudley brings readers inside the deadly group.

This book explores China's Belt and Road Initiative and the criminogenic potential for economic, financial, and socio-cultural cooperation across countries, where some are known for weak law enforcement and high levels of corruption. It examines whether these flows of capital are increasing the amount of organized crime in the newly linked regions and how law enforcement agencies are responding. Bringing together experts across the Global South and Europe, this book considers transnational organized crime and corruption across One Belt One Road (OBOR). It examines crime and corruption in China and its international United Front tactic; analyzes various forms of transnational organized crime such as trafficking of illegal drugs, looted antiquities, and wildlife and counterfeit products; and presents studies on corruption and organized crime in selected OBOR countries including Russia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Poland, and Bangladesh. This book makes a significant contribution to the development of southern criminology and will also be of interest to those engaged with transnational organized crime, political economy, international relations, and Asian and Chinese studies.

Skip and Lily Taylor's oldest son Stephen learned as a young teenager that he could make good money selling drugs and traded a bright future for 8 and a half years in prison. When a chance encounter with a well-dressed guest at a party in Austin, Texas, results in Stephen becoming a mule for a drug cartel, he takes a devastating detour from a well-planned life. Unconfined chronicles the true story of Stephen's arrest and incarceration for a nonviolent drug crime. Readers will: Get a glimpse at what it is really like to go to federal prison in America Understand the emotions and experiences of family members who love someone in prison See how God can still work in the most unthinkable circumstances Unconfined tells the first-hand account through the eyes of Stephen and Skip and shares the transformational power of faith to overcome anger, grief, and loss.

Fear is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodriguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorised and controlled what was once Miriam's quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the US border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own revenge.

Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she began a crusade to track down Karen's killers and help other victimised families.

What can a person do when their country and the town where they have grown up become unrecognisable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed tells the mesmerising story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces drive people to seek justice on their own.

This work examines the structure and illegal activities of organized crime groups in Taiwan and explores the infiltration of crime groups into the business and political arenas. It looks at the intricate relationship among government officials, elected deputies, businessmen, and underworld figures.

In recent years, black gold politics has become a major issue in Taiwan. The term black gold politics refers to the penetration of violent racketeers and self-serving businessmen into politics. According to Ko-lin Chin, this situation can be very threatening to a society since it undermines the integrity and legitimacy of public institutions. As members of the underworld transform their criminal identities into that of legitimate businessmen a society may experience changes in the institutional structure of the political economy. This book examines the structure and illegal activities of organized crime groups in Taiwan and explores the infiltration of crime groups into the business and political arenas. The author looks at the intricate relationship among government officials, elected deputies, businessmen, and underworld figures. He evaluates the impact of the purification of organized crime in Taiwan and includes data collected from first-hand interviews with underworld figures, government officials, law enforcement authorities, elected representatives, and other key informants. This timely study will help academics and policymakers to better understand the social and poli

This is the first entire book devoted to the Irish-American gangster who was known as "Chicago's Arch Killer" and "The Boss of the 42nd and 43rd Wards."

Drug trafficking is the most visible part of the profits of organized crime, which have grown considerably since the end of the cold war. The mirror of history shows us the impact of the drug trade in the colonization of Asia. The post cold war geopolitical context reproduces elements of the past, with new opportunities for drug trafficking in the globalization process, as can be seen in the example of China, and the lasting impunity in terms of money laundering. With the growing role of offshore locations in the global financial system, criminal prosperity has even affected the economic stability of some countries. This book presents a new and heterodox interpretation of the post cold war financial crisis, by focusing on the unexplored dimension of illicit actors.
The Mexican crisis of 1994 and its 'tequila effect' is analyzed as a model of a 'cocaine effect' from the local laundering of profits from the sale of drugs in the US. The Japanese crisis of the 1990s is put in relation to the economic influence of the Yakuza on the real estate bubble, which had the effect of postponing necessary market adjustments. And the Thai crisis of 1997 is analyzed in the light of massive money laundering of institutional and criminal networks, whose undeclared profits represent about 10% of GDP.

The machine-gun murders of seven men on the morning of February 14, 1929, by killers dressed as cops became the gangland crime of the century."" Or so the story went. Since then it has been featured in countless histories, biographies, movies, and television specials. 'The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, ' however, is the first book-length treatment of the subject, and it challenges the commonly held assumption that Al Capone ordered the slayings to gain supremacy in the Chicago underworld.""

This title was first published in 2003. The "Red Mafia" in Russia have become the subject of increasing international interest and considerable misinterpretation. After well-received editions in Russian, French and Italian, Anton Oleinik's study of Russian prisons, in which he explores the social roots of organized crime in post-Soviet societies, is now published in English. This English edition includes a postscript on the Moscow terrorist crisis of 2002. Oleinik's analysis reveals prison society as a mirror of broader Russian society - characterized by the absence of the state as an organizer of social practices. He builds on this to make a central distinction between two types of societies - the modern "large" society and the "small" society, like Russia, that has only been partially modernized, and in which the world of everyday life, experiences and relationships remains entirely separated from the official aims of modernization and efficiency. Oleinik is interested in the void between these two separate worlds, a void he sees being filled in Russia by the Mafia.

Ethnic organized crime is a phenomenon that has been largely ignored by social scientists and historians, and dismissed as a subject not to be taken too seriously by those researching the mobility patterns of their own ethnic ancestors or current minority newcomers. "The Crooked Ladder" represents a groundbreaking attempt to describe how some members of ethnic minorities have utilized organized crime as one vehicle of upward mobility, advancing from lower-class status to middle-class power and respectability.

O'Kane illustrates the criminal road to prosperity as a process of displacement and succession: each group competes with and eventually eliminates its more established predecessor from the upper echelons of organized crime. This historical criminal succession mirrors the upward mobility of the Irish, Jews, and Italians in the larger, conventional noncriminal realm. Arguing that African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics are pursuing similar criminal routes, O'Kane takes issue with contemporary social scientists who view the current plight of minorities as unique in American social life.

As a fundamental rethinking of the American ethnic experience with crime, "The Crooked Ladder" will be essential reading for social historians, sociologists, and criminologists. Now available in paperback, it will be useful in criminology courses and well as classes in ethnicity and social relations.

Sokaiya are extortionists who target Japanese corporations for payoffs. They threaten to reveal corporate secrets and scandals, usually at shareholder meetings. This book explores the curious but not unusual relationship that grows between executives and sokaiya, who also offer their services to protect the corporation from other sokaiya, thus becoming a necessary evil in the world of Japanese business. The book documents the history and development of sokaiya over the past 100 years since Japan first enacted a commercial code. It includes interviews with police, lawyers, corporate executives, as well as sokaiya and members of the yakuza (traditional Japanese gangsters).

This work has its origin in the International Conference on Preventing and Controlling Money Laundering and the Use of Proceeds of Crime: A Global Approach organised by ISPAC, the International Scientific and Advisory Board of the United Nations in co-operation with the Crime and Justice Branch of the United Nations under the auspices of the Italian Government. Some of the main papers presented are substantially revised and collected in this book, which is divided into "Trends and Implications" and "Tuning the Instruments". The chapters develop an analysis of the different aspects of the money laundering problem and attempt to tune the instruments for combating them. Globalization of the problem calls for globalization of the responses. By presenting a wide range of different approaches and experiences, this book explores the threads of the global web that is international money laundering. While offering no simple solutions, it reinforces the need for action, positing strategies that address all aspects of the problem.

The most destructive force in the Americas today is not El NiNo-it is the criminal enterprises that recognize no geographic, legal or moral boundaries. This book exposes the main characteristics and effects of criminal enterprises in the Americas and considers realistic strategies for combating them. Looking at how crime penetrates private business, government, and the everyday lives of the people, this collection examines the impact of criminal enterprises on the legitimate economy and the ability of states to promote the rule of law. It compares criminal enterprises in the Americas with other regions, and considers the foreign policy concerns of the US. With a recent upsurge in the scope, sophistication and cooperation among groups, this book is essential tool for understanding one of the greatest challenges to security, peace and democracy in the Americas.

Contents:
Forward. Preface. 1.Triads, Business and Market. Part I: The Triads 2.The Origins. 3.The Organisation. Part II: Legal Markets 4.Protection Against Extortionists. 5.Protection Against Competitors: Traditional Operations. 6.Protection Against Competitors: Recent Operations. 7.Dispute Settlement. Part III: Illegal Markets 8.Drug Dealing. 9.Gambling. 10.Prostitution. Part IV: International Markets 11.Drug Trafficking. 12.Human Smuggling. Part V: Implications and Reflections 13.Are Triads Extortionists, Entrepreneurs, or Protectors? 14.International Triad Movement: Emigration or Reversion? 15.New Directions in the study of Triads.

Challenging Organized Crime in the Western Hemisphere: A Game of Moves and Countermoves takes the unusual approach of exploring and describing how organized crime groups develop their capacities in response to heightened powers of law enforcement; and how law enforcement in turn responds, creating an ongoing dynamic interaction. The book shows how a state, such as the United States, has and can develop new laws and practices in ways that enable them to deal with relatively large violent groups-and yet preserve the rule of law and civil liberties. While most texts describe organized crime groups and the challenges to government they impose from a static perspective, the authors dissect the interaction over time of organized crime and democratic governance that has created the present structure and balance of advantages in the United States. Readers learn about the markets for contraband and extortionate protection that form the bulk of organized criminal enterprise, the vulnerabilities of the traditional practices and rules of law enforcement, the effects of globalization of criminal enterprises on their contest with the state, the effectiveness of various practices of law enforcement, and the continuing forces of change, often technological, in the businesses of organized crime and law enforcement that play important roles in the contest between them. This thought- provoking book is ideal for students of organized and transnational crime in university programs and law schools, as well as researchers and legal practitioners, who seek to look beyond the simple traditional history of organized crime and develop a strategy to confront organized crime in the future.

Mafia-type organizations generate several distorting effects on the economy. In Italy their presence is endemic, and not only in Southern regions such as Sicily, Campania or Calabria. Such organizations endure the fierce and continuous pressure exerted by Italian anti-mafia policy, maybe the most articulate and effective such policy in the world. Nevertheless, they have survived by submerging, transforming, and relocating their operations. The analysis of the different Mafias of today benefits from a huge amount of empirical data produced by investigators. This allows us to outline more reliable indexes of the penetration of Mafiosi in given territories, as well as to estimate the size of their activities in a transparent and empirically testable way. The contributions gathered in this book stem from the application of an innovative methodology originally introduced by the Fondazione Rocco Chinnici, and they enlarge our understanding of such a complex and dynamic phenomenon. After the presentation of the approach, the chapters are devoted to the Camorra's present situation, to an estimate of the size of extortion, to a comparison between Cosa Nostra and Camorra, to the analysis of wiretapped conversations and, finally, to the delocalization of Mafias and the perspectives of a European anti-mafia policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Crime.

Russian criminal organizations have become a major force in Russia's evolution towards democracy and a free market, although the exact nature of their impact is still poorly understood. For all the concern and publicity it has generated, Russian organized crime is not well understood, which makes this volume all the more useful.