McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (book review)

[MikeWB]

Listening to interview with the author of this fascinating book on C2CAM tonite (Sat 24, 2008 show).

49 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
 The Internationalism of Crime, April 16, 2008
By    Robert C. Ross "robcurtross@hotmail.com" (Franklin Lakes, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
   
This is a big, sprawling chaotic book, one of the most important books I've read in the past year. Misha Glenny has spent three years interviewing criminals all over the world in an effort to understand them on their own terms. His experiences as a reporter and author have given him the skills to make these people come alive on the page and to give the reader a good understanding of how they practice their crimes.

It is hard to find a common explanation for the genesis of this business, estimated to constitute 15 to 20% of the world's income. Two themes: crime flourishes when a strong central government disintegrates (e.g. USSR, Bulgaria) or when crime and government work hand in hand (e.g. Japan, Dubai, Israel.)

One story in Tel Aviv weaves the two themes together. After the fall of the USSR, over a million Russian Jews immigrated into Tel Aviv, a swinging city with a culture quite different than the more conservative European Jews already in Israel. Drugs and illicit sex were common, and the Russian influx institutionalized the business. Even today, Glenny writes, there are many brothels in Tel Aviv. One haunting story: a prostitute manages to escape from her captors and goes to the police station. The booking officer is a patron of the brothel and returns her to the owner of the brothel.

Many of the other examples are equally fascinating and frightening:

Transnistria, smaller than Rhode Island, broke away from Moldova and is a source of illegal arms from the former Soviet Army and two unmonitored weapons factories. "These spew out of Transnistria via Odessa and into the world of war -- the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, western and central Africa."

The collapse of the Soviet Union released many state employees into the labor market. "All manner of operatives lost their jobs: secret police, counterintelligence officers, special-forces commandos and border guards, as well as homicide detectives and traffic cops. Their skills included surveillance, smuggling, killing people, establishing networks and blackmail."

Albania was released from a repressive regime, but was unable to export its citrus fruits into Europe in the face of the heavily subsidized orchards in Greece, Spain and Italy. The farmers and the national economy moved to the production of marijuana, Glenny argues almost by necessity. (The Taliban is funding its weapon purchases in the same way.)

The Japan's yakuza has an aging membership and a lack of young recruits; solution: outsource murders to Chinese gangs.

"The illegality of labor smuggling lies in the illogicality of globalization. The European Union has a labor shortage and an aging population that is not being replenished because of low birthrates. But restrictive immigration policies remain in force. The result? An open invitation to far-reaching criminal enterprises."

Glenny moves from one criminal activity to another: marijuana traffickers in British Columbia, snakeheads who "export" poor peasants from China, brothels in Tel Aviv, pachinko parlors in Tokyo, sex clubs in Dubai, a complex flow chart of an energy scam run by the Hungarian company Eural Trans Gas, a Nigerian stealing $242 million from Banco Noroeste, a Brazilian private bank. ("When surveying the undulating landscape of Nigerian crime, it is hard not to develop a sense of admiration for the loving care and creativity with which it is fashioned.")

This fascinating book argues that organized crime is a major threat to all of us: drugs, prostitution, arms trafficking, identity theft, internet crime and fake goods cause great misery and threaten to do so for many years to come.

Robert C. Ross 2008

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400044111/