![]() ![]() Europol observed in its 2013 report on Italian organized crime, "the overall strategy of Italian Mafias when operating abroad is that of keeping a low profile." The type of control sought by the Mafias when abroad is purely economic, in the wider sense, not limited to the essential goal of making money, but extended to all aspects of the production and consumption of goods and services, the backbone of any country."Ĭonsider, for instance, the burden on the economy of the huge profits made even by drug trafficking alone. Though there is less killing, the danger that investigators stress is their adverse effect on the economy, the market, and free competition. Mafias and criminal organizations end up going "jurisdictional shopping", meaning that they take advantage of countries where standards (and investigations) are softer. ![]() Likewise, negotiations in the European Public Prosecutor's office have run aground, also because not wanted by several Member States. But these documents have all remained dead in the water due to the opposition of several Member States, despite constant requests from Europol and Eurojust, which are the EU's police and court, respectively. For at least a decade, the Parliament in Strasbourg has been approving documents that ask specifically to extend the offense of mafia association to all Member States, the law, called 416 bis in the Italian penal code, and to allow unexplained assets to be confiscated, even without a criminal conviction, and is another cutting-edge "invention" of Italian legislation. Yet, the system for fighting organized crime at an EU level seems to be mainly spinning its wheels, despite some progress made. Many of these organizations pollute the legal economy by laundering their profits and ultimately affect the economic and social life of parts of the country, just like the Italian mafias, though usually on a smaller scale. This even goes for even countries with excellent civic traditions and levels of crime decidedly under control, as the case of the Syrian mafia in Sweden shows. No country can consider itself immune, as our interactive map shows. Investigations and reports highlight the importance of Russian-speaking and Turkish mafias, the rise of Albanian clan bosses in marijuana trafficking and other areas, the danger of lesser-known groups at an international level, biker gangs spreading in Northern Europe, and Vietnamese clans active mainly in Eastern Europe. Seven out of ten of these operate in more than one country, and they split an illegal market, including drugs and counterfeiting, which Transcrime estimates at almost 110 billion euro, about 1% of EU GDP. ![]() Of course, few of these are as deep as the Italian mafias, under 145 investigations on a European level, coordinated by Eurojust from 2012 to 2016. In the European Union's 28 Member States, about five thousand organized crime groups are under investigation according to the Europol 2017 report. It does not stop at the 'Ndrangheta, Camorra, and Cosa Nostra. ![]()
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