Mob Wars Hit New Heights in Israel

When an explosion goes off on a busy Israeli street these days, it seems as likely to be a mob hit as a Palestinian attack. Rival underworld gangs are waging bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, targeting each other with bullets, bombs and anti-tank missiles.

Turkey: Gang found to be linked to retired army officers

Nineteen members of the Patriotic Forces Union of Power Movement Association (VKGB), taken into custody on Monday after an extensive operation by the Anti-Organized Crime and Smuggling Department of the Ankara Police, have been referred to court after their interrogation at the police station on Tuesday.

Political Corruption in Poland

Please have a look at this paper http://www.forschungsstelle-osteuropa.de/con/images/stories/pdf/ap/fsoAP65.pdf
and tell us something more about this issue in Eastern European Countries

Political Corruption: an Introduction to the Issues

Please find an interesting paper on the following link http://www.cmi.no/publications/1999/wp/wp1999-7.pdf

Emails expose sordid tale of political corruption

To understand the nature of the Abramoff scandal that rocked Washington in 2006, it is especially helpful to look at the email files that US Senate Indian Affairs Committee have put on the Internet. These emails reveal a sordid, day-by-day account in Abramoff's own words documenting how he maneuvered government officials and others in Washington to transfer millions of dollars in fraudulent fees from his clients into the coffers of the political establishment in Washington.

Auditors attack EU spending again

From 2006: European Union auditors have drawn attention to irregularities in EU spending for the 12th year running, in their report on the 2005 budget. The auditors declared the accounts reliable overall, but criticised the spending of funds on the ground, particularly aid for poorer regions.

Firms accused of bribing Saddam to be investigated by fraud office·

The Guardian February 14, 2007

The Serious Fraud Office has launched an investigation into allegations that a number of major UK-based firms paid bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The firms being targeted include the drug giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly. The international oil traders and UK bridge-builders Mabey and Johnson are also to be investigated.
They are on a long list of international companies accused in a UN report of paying kickbacks under the discredited oil-for-food sanctions regime, which enabled Saddam to illicitly amass an estimated $1.8bn. Ministers have agreed to fund the investigation with £22m over three years.

Papers and Articles on State Failure

Beck et al. 2001Beck, Nathaniel; Epstein, David; Jackman, Simon; O'Halloran, Sharyn (2001): Alternative Models of Dynamics in Binary Time-Series-Cross-Section Models: The example of state failure. Paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, Emory University, 18-22 July 2001.

Hesselbein; Golloba-Mutebi; Putzel 2006Hesselbein, Gabi; Golooba-Mutebi, Frederick; Putzel, James (2006): Economic and Political Foundations of State-Making in Africa: Understanding state reconstruction. London: Crisis States Working Paper No. 3, Series No. 2.

Korteweg; Ehrhardt 2006Korteweg, Rem; Ehrhardt, David (2006): Terrorist Black Holes: A study into terrorist sanctuaries and governmental weakness. Den Haag: Clingendael Centre for Strategic Studies

World Bank Independent Evaluation Group 2006World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (2006): Engaging with Fragile States: An IEG review of World Bank support to low-income countries under stress. Washington D.C.: The World Bank Group.

Organised crime 'thriving' in Queensland

The "Mr Bigs" of organised crime in Queensland were thriving untouched because law enforcement agencies could not tap phones, a federal parliamentary committee has been told. Criminal investigators were virtually powerless to stop flourishing criminal networks and were forced to rely on interstate policing bodies for phone surveillance, the committee heard.

Queensland is the only state in Australia where crime fighting authorities do not have telephone interception or phone tapping powers, despite more than a decade of lobbying from police and the Crime and Misconduct Commission.

Law-Enforcement Disruption of a Drug Importation Network

Abstract

This study focuses on the structure and evolution of a drug importation network that operated from Montreal, Canada, and that was the target of an extensive 2-year criminal investigation. The investigation was atypical in that it followed a seize-but-do-not-arrest strategy - while 11 drug shipments were seized by police throughout this period, arrests were never made until the final phase of the investigation. Such a case offers a rare opportunity to study the dynamics of a criminal network under intense surveillance and disruption. The reconstruction of the importation network is based on electronic communication transcripts that were intercepted and compiled during the investigation. Findings from analyses of the principal changes that took place within the communication network reveal how network centralization and critical node status are variable, and not static, properties of a criminal network under considerable constraint. The study demonstrates how a criminal network decentralizes and is re-ordered in response to intense law-enforcement targeting. Contributions are made to research on disruption in criminal networks. We conclude with a discussion on how a criminal network's flexibility, a feature generally presented as a sign of resilience, may contribute to a more significant demise within a context of intensive control.

Keywords: criminal network; social network analysis; drug trafficking; law-enforcement; critical node

Carlo Morselli and Katia Petit (2007) Global Crime 8(2): 109-130.