This article has been written by Ms. A.Taibah Fathima, a 5th year BA.LLB student from Government Law College, Villupuram, Tamil Nadu

 

ABSTRACT:

The paper indicates that criminal groups may differ in terms of size, the scope of operations, types of activities, territorial range, relations with authorities and management, internal organization, and the set of means and methods used to promote their criminal activities and to guard against measures taken by the Government and law enforcement bodies. When national, historical, and cultural differences are taken into account, the diversity of criminal organizations becomes even more evident, while prevention and suppression pose even greater challenges for law enforcement agencies, especially in countries where these organizations are active in their illegal activities. The study is aimed at analyzing national-level legislative measures that may be efficient about one type of organized criminal group, but may not be appropriate for other types. To solve the problems formulated, a complex methodology will be required, combining empirical studies of specific facts and a fundamental theoretical understanding of the conceptual foundations of the problem posed.

The results of the analysis made it possible to theoretically substantiate the increased social danger of transnational organized criminal groups, which entails the adoption of appropriate legislative measures. Identifying the latency level of transnational crimes will make it possible to assess the efficiency of the existing sets of measures against it, as well as to formulate recommendations on improving the system of legislative measures to prevent the activities of transnational criminal organizations. A gap in the study can be attributed to the insufficient amount of statistical information on the analyzed crime. The novelty of the research lies in the comprehensive analysis of the current state of transnational organized crime.

Keywords: Organized transnational crime, international cooperation, national legislation, transnational criminal organizations, crime, prevention.

 

INTRODUCTION: 

Transnational criminal organizations that derive significant profits from their links to legal businesses find it necessary and beneficial to deal with government officials to assist in money laundering and counterintelligence. Established links may be based on bribery, coercion, or a combination of the two. Organized criminal groups prefer systematic corruption that aims to ensure that a favorable and secure base in their country or a suitable environment in their host countries is maintained. The widespread use of bribes is typical for the implementation and application of this method to ensure compliance of officials in key positions and institutions, and to finance political parties so that politicians feel obligated to criminal organizations and carefully pay law enforcement officials for providing information to criminals. These links between the illegal and legal worlds undermine the system of governance.

The focus of this paper is instead on another of the so-called “non-traditional” threats to security which have recently emerged on the security studies agenda: namely, transnational organized crime. In recent years, the transnational character of organized crime has been remarked upon repeatedly and identified as a worrying trend. Traditionally the province of criminologists, lawyers and sociologists, the enormous profits and power said to accrue to today’s leading criminal organizations and networks have brought crime onto the curricula of political science and economics. This is the “dark side” of globalization, where criminal organizations are said not only to have benefited from the increasingly open global economy, but to have developed powerful tools, techniques and relationships to thwart state attempts at controlling their activities. These activities are those of traditional organized crime – violence, intimidation, extortion, and corruption – only on a larger scale; for some observers, transnational criminal organizations now pose a threat to the nation-state.

For example, decades of phone tapping and electronic surveillance in the U.S. have allowed law enforcement agencies to be effective against criminal groups. At the same time, this method proved useless in the struggle against Nigerian and Chinese groups, who negotiated in a variety of dialects.

 

Nature and current situation of transnational organized crime:

The nature of criminal activity in the international arena varies along a number of axes. The World Ministerial Conference on Organized Transnational Crime held in Naples in the fall of 1994 developed a series of characteristics typical of transnational organized crime, which while not a definition sheds light on the dominant activities of these groups. These characteristics included:

• group organization to commit crime;
• hierarchical links or personal relationships which permit leaders to control the group;
• violence, intimidation and corruption used to earn profits or control territories or markets;
• laundering of illicit proceeds both in furtherance of criminal activity and to infiltrate the

legitimate economy;

• the potential for expansion into any new activities and beyond national borders; and
• cooperation with other organized transnational criminal groups.

This listing bears some relation to the context in which the meeting took place, as the set of relationships describes more closely those criminal groups based on the personalistic Mafia model than it does others, for instance the Boryukudan of Japan. Nevertheless, most of the key elements of a useful definition of transnational organized crime are there, including groups organized through personal relationships; the regular use of violence, fraud or corruption to gain illegal access to various goods, assets, control of markets, etc.; and the subsequent reintroduction or integration of criminal assets into the legal economy.

The growing borderless-ness of organized crime is reflected in the Naples Declaration’s discussion of these groups having the potential to expand their activities beyond state boundaries, and of the existence of cooperative relationships between criminal groups in different countries. Structurally, criminal groups have been able to exploit the institution of state sovereignty in a variety of ways to conduct their activities beyond the reach of the authorities, whether as a consequence of legal loopholes, the lack of extradition agreements and other mutual assistance, or as a result of the sheer difficulty of coordinating investigative techniques internationally.

But the exercise of defining transnational organized crime opens a Pandora’s box of variables which complicates the task of this paper. The first problem is that there are crimes which are transnational but not organized, and likewise crimes which are organized but not transnational. In the first instance, one might consider the individual smuggling of valuables for personal gain; in the second, the traditional control of criminal markets in prostitution by city-based crime groups operating exclusively within national boundaries. For the purposes of this analysis, these categories of crime can be ignored as having little potential to result in anything resembling a security threat.

 

LONG TERM TRANSNATIONAL THREAT:

This threat may be stated in dramatic terms, but it is in the longer term where significant dangers lie. The Russian situation is clearly a current cause for concern. The degree to which criminality has pervaded the political, institutional and financial infrastructure of the post-Soviet apparatus has done much to undermine the fragile democratic institutionalization of the past decade. In China, where governing and regulatory eyes are trained hard on the Russian experience given Chinese moves towards economic deregulation, the problems of financial fraud (of many kinds) and misappropriation of public funds are currently experiencing exponential growth rates, abetted by the introduction of new information technologies.28 In Japan, an advanced democracy whose political system is nonetheless currently in flux due to a repeated series of scandals involving ruling groups, the current financial crisis has been exacerbated by the degree of yakuza penetration of the banking sector.

What is true for Russia and China (if less so for Japan) is also a problem for other leading economies in the newly-democratizing regions: the degree of economic advance and growth currently outstrips the degree of democratic institutionalization and the sophistication of regulatory controls over financial networks. The first states to experience the step-level increase in financial sophistication wrought by the information revolution were those states already possessing a well-institutionalized banking and supervisory system. The states currently undergoing the transition to this degree of sophistication have not had the advantage of a pre-existing, sophisticated regulatory structure.

 Thus for example China does not yet have in place a money-laundering law, and the problem of regulating suspicious or illegal financial transactions is simply awesome in an economy which is not only huge, but is primarily cash as opposed to credit based.

 

RESULTS OF CONTINUOUS PREVENTIVE PROCESS:

With more efforts and increased cooperation at the international level, significant progress can be made in the fight against organized transnational crime. However, rarely is there an attempt to make a real assessment of the balance of power, that is, of the capacity of organized transnational crime on the one hand, and state authorities, including law enforcement bodies, on the other. By its very nature, law enforcement activities are primarily aimed at responding. That means that the efforts made for that,purpose are disproportionately large compared to the corresponding efforts made by criminal organizations.

This is most evident in the case of money-laundering. The procedure itself, given the capabilities of modern technology, can take several minutes, although the investigation of such cases may require significant resources of law enforcement agencies, which will take months and years. Transnational criminal organizations are very mobile and closed, so their activities take

place unnoticed. States are governed by existing laws and regulations and are accountable to their citizens. By contrast, criminal organizations by their very nature violate laws and regulations, and the lack of accountability gives them great leeway. Another.

important factor is the ability to use available funds quickly. Criminal organizations do not have to wait for the results of the parliamentary vote on the allocation of the required funds; they are not closely scrutinized in the use of those funds.

 

 RECOMMENDATIONS:

With more efforts and increased cooperation at the international level, significant progress can be made in the fight against organized transnational crime. However, rarely is there an attempt to make a real assessment of the balance of power, that is, of the capacity of organized transnational crime on the one hand, and state authorities, including law enforcement bodies, on the other. By its very nature, law enforcement activities are primarily aimed at responding. That means that the efforts made for that purpose are disproportionately large compared to the corresponding efforts made by criminal organizations. This is most evident in the case of money-laundering.

The procedure itself, given the capabilities of modern technology, can take several minutes, although the investigation of such cases may require significant resources of law enforcement agencies, which will take months and years. Transnational criminal organizations are very mobile and closed, so their activities take place unnoticed. States are governed by existing laws

and regulations and are accountable to their citizens. By contrast, criminal organizations by their very nature violate laws and regulations, and the lack of accountability gives them great leeway.  

 

CONCLUSION:

 

Under the current circumstances, comprehensive and effective cooperation in the fight against

transnational criminal organizations becomes essential. In that regard, it is of paramount importance to:

 (a) identify and continuously monitor the various everchanging challenges posed by transnational organized crime

 (b) pay special attention to those types of crime considered to be the most dangerous and most

alarming;

 (c) be aware of the problems arising from existing or emerging differences between individual

countries in their understanding and assessment of transnational crime;

 (d) study issues related to the development of legislative frameworks in different

States;

 (e) consider problems relating to the expansion or relocation of transnational criminal organizations activities from one country to another with weak protective mechanisms; 

(f) examine the conditions conducive to the growth and expansion of transnational criminal organizations, including social, economic and political factors; the structural characteristics of organized crime; shortcomings in the measures taken to combat it; insufficient funding for institutions that deal with crime; (g) gradually develop an integrated framework;

 (h) work out a global strategy for more efficient interstate cooperation

 

    Success in the fight against transnational organized crime cannot be guaranteed unless a dialectical relationship between law enforcement and organized crime is in place. We need comprehensive and protective mechanisms, dynamic actions of the international community, taking into account priorities, and preventive measures. The real danger posed by criminal transnational formations is noted both for individual states, where such organizations are located, and for the stability of the international community as a whole.

REFERENCES:

• The list can be found in the “Naples Political Declaration and Global Action Plan Against Organized Transnational Crime,” Section II, Subsection A, Paragraph 12, contained in The World Ministerial Conference on Organized Transnational Crime, United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Newsletter, Nos. 26/27, Vienna, November 1995.

 

• See the list developed in “Problems and Dangers Posed by Organized Transnational Crime in the Various Regions of the World,” a background paper developed for the Naples Ministerial Conference of November 1994, reproduced in Phil Williams and Ernesto Savona (eds), The United Nations and Transnational Organized Crime, a special issue of Transnational Organized Crime 1: 3 (Autumn 1995).

 

• Remarks by the Chief Justice of the Shanghai High People’s Court, Address to the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, Vancouver, September 22, 1997.

 

• International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2020, 9, 797-802 797 On topic The Current State of Transnational Organized Crime by Vladimir Golubovskii, Mikhail Kostyuk and Elena Kunts

 

• Transnational Organized Crime and International Security by Allan Castle from Institute of International Relations The University of British Columbia