Canada: How illegal bars are fuelling organized crime in the Lower Mainland

Across the Lower Mainland, police are concerned about a proliferation of after-hours clubs frequented by gangsters, bikers and others -- lucrative, clandestine operations that in many cases are helping fuel organized crime.

Europol Annual Report

According to the 2006 Europol Annual report organised crime groups in 2006 continued to increase their level of specialisation as well as the use that they make of legitimate business structures. Their internal structure allows them to expand their fields of activity across crime types and international borders. As expected, globalisation is heavily influencing the way organised crime groups communicate and cooperate among themselves. They employ the latest communication technologies to maintain and expand their national and international links. The report is available here.

Organised crime is fast becoming a leading player in the global tobacco industry

Organised crime is fast becoming a leading player in the global tobacco industry, costing companies and governments billions of pounds in lost profits and taxes, according to British American Tobacco.

Canada: Stowaway ship tip may have been organized crime ploy

The Mounties are checking to see if organized crime planted false information to prompt a massive search for stowaways on a container ship that came to Halifax this month.

IP crime Directive approved

A controversial Directive which criminalises intellectual property violations in Europe was approved yesterday by the European Parliament but does not include its most controversial element, the criminalising of patent infringement.

Supporters of the Directive say it is aimed at organised crime, but opponents claim that it could criminalise legitimate activities. The proposed directive is also controversial because if passed it would become the first directive to impose criminal penalties across Europe.

New smuggling tactic: swallowing money

The Royal Marechaussee on Schiphol airport last week arrested a woman who had instead of the usual drugs had swallowed money in secure packages. In total the 57-year old woman had swallowed 43 packages containg 258 bills worth 500 euro each, totalling 129.000 euro. The woman was trying to smuggle the money on a flight to Madrid.

UNODC:Countries ignorant about threats posed by transnational crime

Law enforcement authorities around the world “operate in an information fog” about transnational organized crime, ignorant of the scope of the threats faced and unable to gauge global trends, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned today, calling on UN Member States to develop a coherent blueprint to deal with the problem.

Global Organised Crime. A lecture.

A lecture by former BBC journalist Misha Glenny on how globalisation and the collapse of communism are jointly responsible for the exponential growth in the global shadow economy since the mid-1980s.

Organised crime wave grips Guatemala

In 1996, when Guatemala emerged from a bloody civil war lasting more than 30 years, people thought that the peace accords between government and leftwing rebels would bring an end to the violence. A little more than a decade later, spiralling drugs­related crime has proved them wrong. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 6,033 people were murdered last year – 13 per cent more than in 2005 and higher even than during the conflict.
The Financial Times reports.

Interesting in this regard is also an UN report El costo económico de la violencia en Guatemala(pdf) with background information.

Australia: new Criminal Assets Confiscation Act allows police to seize more assets

Police figures provided to the Sunday Mail reveal that, since the new Criminal Assets Confiscation Act came into force in April last year, restraining orders have been placed over criminal assets valued at $17,732,167.