McMafia - by Misha Glenny

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

This is a must read (or listen) book.  I recommend it highly. Chapter 5 has the rundown on the Israeli Mob and how Israel is intended to be a Global Crime center.
--THE CSR
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/06/society

This is undoubtedly true, up to a point, but it's a truth that is based on a more fundamental reality: when goods and activities are illegal, it's the criminals who make the profits. Glenny works hard to marry this timeless law to the contemporary globalised scene, in particular to the liberalised movement of capital. The problem is not that the relationship doesn't exist, but that it doesn't conform to a narrative-friendly pattern. Thus the story begins to fragment into an episodic summary of crime enterprises around the world - hence the title's global-franchise reference. Some of the characters, like one Semyon Mogilevich, one of Russia's leading criminals, come across like Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects, an elusive, half-legendary incarnation of evil. Others barely register amid the multinational cast of walk-on scoundrels and psychopaths that appear in a series of decreasingly shocking anecdotes.

The scene shifts from Russia to the Middle East, India on to Colombia and South Africa, but with each jump the specific causes of crime become less well defined until all that's manifest is a general sense that a combination of unstable states and sought-after natural resources attract some highly unprincipled individuals. This is in no way a reflection on Glenny's research, which is extensive. Rather the scale of the subject mitigates against the kind of plotting, themes and characters that lend non-fiction, at its best, a satisfying shape.