I. List the succession of actions in the order which they come in the text.
II. Find the sentences in the text to prove the cruelty of the Black Legion. Comment on the methods of the Black Legion.
TEXT 7
Criminology
Prof. Gerhard Muller is a criminologist of world renown and a prominent specialist in the fight against organized crime. For more than two decades he has headed the United Nations' Commission for Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, and is a classifier of international mafia groups. The world has become small. Air passenger traffic rose from 26 billion to 600 billion man-miles in the period between I960 and 1992. World imports increased from $330 billion in 1960 to $3,500 billion in 1990. Billions of dollars daily change hands by electronic transfer, and nearly half of this wealth is concealed from taxmen in order to keep its origin secret.
When criminal acts, deals and schemes violate the laws of more than one country, they are said to be transnational crimes. The UN has classified all transnational crimes into 17 groups.
1. MONEY LAUNDERING aims at legalizing ill-gotten profits. A huge portion of this money is earned through bribery, corruption, black-market activity, tax evasion, and especially through arms smuggling, the sale of stolen art objects, and drug trafficking.
It has been established that the annual proceeds from the illicit sale of narcotics worldwide are between $300 billion and $500 billion. What do the dug barons do with this fabulous wealth? In the United States, nothing, because this is dirty cash. But it can be laundered abroad and brought back to the U.S. to buy whole industries, real estate and political influence.
The most common way of laundering money is to take it to a foreign country clandestinely, and place it in bank accounts there via repeated international transfers, after which it will be impossible to trace its origin. Finally, the "clean" bills are legally invested in the economy but remain under the underworld's control.
We do not know the true magnitude of money laundering, but investigation by the Group of Seven industrialized nations is yielding fruit. Investigation is carried out in those countries where the secrecy of bank deposits is guarded by law; the aim of investigation is to secure information on suspicious bank accounts.
2. TERRORISM. Only recently, most Americans knew little about the scope of international terrorism because their country was not affected. The terrorist act at New York's International Trade Center, the explosion during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, and the blowing up of American planes made them aware that Americans and American interests are becoming a target of international terrorism.
Governments in all countries (except those that support international terrorism) hoped to curb international terrorism through international negotiations and accords. But every round of talks left the adherents of a "Firm hand" dissatisfied. As a result, acts of terrorism are continuing, while modern communications and means of transport are making it easier to commit such acts. Governments that are tough toward terrorists must therefore be prepared for sudden terrorist retaliation.
An international mechanism that would ensure the arrest and extradition of international terrorists is still in the making. Criminologists are still studying the problem of terrorism, which knows no state frontiers.
3. THEFT OF ART WORKS AND CULTURAL OBJECTS. Such crimes pose a potential threat to the cultural heritage of all nations. Tombs and monuments were blown up in the days of the Egyptian pharaohs, too. But today's sophisticated weapons used in perpetrating crime and high demand for cultural objects (which can be easily transported nowadays) have enabled international plunderers to work out a system through which they can deprive a whole region, or even a whole country, of its priceless cultural heritage. Every year art works worth an estimated $4.5 billion are stolen and sold on the world market. Investigators are searching for 45,000 valuable works of art, as 2,000 new objects appear on the list every month.
4. THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. The concept "theft of intellectual property" includes violation of the rights of authors and performers, and unlawful use of copyright marks and trademarks. The temptation to reproduce protected works illegally and sell them cheaply or at their usual prices, is overwhelming, especially in countries with an underdeveloped economy. It is difficult to measure in monetary terms the extent of the damage done to the countries where intellectual property is produced and registered. The Association of American Software Makers has estimated that illicit use of software alone causes losses of $7.5 billion annually. Copyright marks cannot be forged by small enterprises or lone entrepreneurs. This job requires skillful coordination and a streamlined marketing system - a business that often requires collusion with government officials.
5. ILLICIT ARMS TRADE. Armed conflicts in hot spots worldwide are fueled by an international network of arms producers and suppliers. The scale of their activity defies statistical valuation. There are not many underworld arms dealers, but they are great tricksters who act in collusion with government agencies. Complete information on the illicit arms trade is unavailable, despite the fact that the origins of the arms and military equipment can be traced.
The most dangerous aspect of these crimes is illicit trafficking in radioactive materials. All attempts at such deals have so far failed, with the goods not reaching the addressees. In a number of cases, the people who stole and transported radioactive materials, and those surrounding them were exposed to radiation. Acting on the recommendations of international organizations, many countries have already established control on the sources of radioactive materials.
6. HIJACKING OF PLANES. Airlines suffered a great deal from this crime in the 1970s and 1980s. Only in rare cases the culprits were lone criminals who demanded ransoms. In most air crimes the terrorists made political demands in an attempt to demonstrate their power, make their organizations known, and propagate their ideologies. Countermeasures against hijacking were swift and effective. Today there are much fewer cases of hijacking.
7. PIRACY. This long forgotten phenomenon reappeared in the mid-1970s, manifesting itself in the illegal shipment of narcotics from South and Central America to the United States in yachts and fishing vessels, which criminals seized in the high seas or at a port after killing their owners or crew, whoever was on board. Several thousand vessels were seized in acts of piracy.
Today piracy also occurs in narrow navigable canals. Thousands of African, South-East Asian and Latin American thieves do not miss the opportunity to steal any valuables and cargoes from vessels lying at anchor or moving at a low speed. However, such theft is on the decline.
Piracy is South-East Asia is believed to be controlled by organized crime, often associated with the armed forces. Criminologists are inclined to infer that synchronized attacks on vessels in different parts of the world are not coincidental, and can be traced to a single center.
8. HIJACKING ON HIGHWAYS. One may be surprised that this type of crime is included in the UN classification, since the hijacking of a truck within a country would normally be defined as a theft. Hijacking frequently occurs when trucks travel enormous distances from Eastern to Western Europe or from Central Asian to Baltic countries. Unfortunately, the frequency of truck hijacking rises in proportion to the growth of trade turnover.
The exact scales of highway hijacking are not known since only four countries have answered the UN questionnaire on this subject. This type of felony is bound to become a burning problem as state borders become more and more open, and as organized crime becomes more widespread, especially in Eastern Europe.
9. FRAUD IN INSURANCE. With insurance now a global industry, swindle in one country now affects all countries. Although the overall damage caused worldwide by this crime has not been estimated, we know, for example, that it causes Australia to lose around $1.7 billion annually, and the United States $100 billion.
Anxious to have a finger in the swindle pie, organized crime is seeking to bring together small businesses operating in different areas of insurance (for instance, in sea-borne cargoes insurance), or to penetrate the insurance industry itself.
10. COMPUTER-RELATED CRIME. As soon as governmental and commercial organizations started making intensive use of computers, the mafia reached out for computer networks. Although the exact extent to which these networks are exposed to criminal influences has not been established, we know that organized crime is making active use of all computer-related facilities.
11. ECOLOGICAL CRIME. The entire world population suffers from ecological crime, the perpetrators being mostly enterprises that act in collusion with environmental regulators. This became particularly manifest when production began to be transferred to developing countries, where controls are either almost non-existent, or depend on the whim of foreign manufacturers. The latter lavishly bribe government officials in these countries. When it comes to employment and gross domestic product growth, the poor nations prefer industrialization to a clean environment. The underworld has already seized a hefty portion of the business of transporting and burying health-hazard substances.
12. TRADE IN HUMANS has been gaining momentum and includes transporting illegal immigrants to their destinations, procuring women for prostitution, hiring people for slave labor, acquiring household servants from developing countries, and selling children for illegal adoption for enormous sums.
There are adequate laws to prevent such crimes, and their stringency matches the transparency of state frontiers. However, the problem of trade in human beings is gaining a new aspect as large numbers of Third World inhabitants seek to immigrate to relatively more prosperous countries.
For the most part, the flow of illegal immigrants to developed countries is controlled by the underworld. Ordinarily, these people fail to find jobs and join marginal groups who are exploited and forced into crimes and disturbances.
13. TRADE IN HUMAN ORGANS. The first transplantation of the kidney is known to have taken place in 1954, of the lungs in 1963, and of the heart in 1967. Nearly half a million kidney transplantations have been carried out to date. Transplantation of body organs as a branch of medicine has given rise to an industry that supplies donor organs. The United States has about 70 organ-supplying agencies, and state and federal authorities are trying to regulate their activities.
There are some 12,000 potential donors in the United States. As this is much fewer than the number needed, illegal businesses that supply organs for transplantation are highly lucrative; a great many of them are based in Third World countries. "Donors" often commit murder for the sake of organs, or they get organs from children of poor families who sell this "commodity" for a pittance.
After the appearance of the first world press reports exposing illegal trade in human organs, a number of countries set up special commissions to draft laws that would regulate the acquisition of transplantation organs. There is sufficient evidence to prove that the delivery of organs from the Third World is controlled by criminal groupings based in Western Europe.
14. DRUG TRAFFICKING. The global turnover of this illicit trade is estimated at an annual $300 billion to $500 billion. Vital international agreements such as the United Nations' 1961 World Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1971 Convention on Psycho-tropic Substances, and 1988 Convention Against illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances created a basis for establishing international controls. However, controls are not in place due to the following reasons:
- the UN cannot monitor the efficacy of these measures and implement the International Drug Control Program because it lacks funds;
- for the same reason, the relevant national and regional programs are not financed;
- countries differ strongly in their approaches to the problem of drug trafficking (some insist on bans, others on control and tolerance);
- many states lack legislative and technical bases for compliance with the international covenants.
15. SHAM BANKRUPTCY. The globalization of trade has turned sham bankruptcies in one country into an international crime. We do not know the true magnitude of this phenomenon, but analysis of selective cases show that the mafia will buy a lucrative enterprise and bankrupt it for the sake of even greater gains. Coordinated international efforts are indispensable for combating such crimes.
16. PENETRATING LEGAL BUSINESSES. When one drinks beer one doesn't care whether the brewery is mafia-owned. Drug cartels and other criminal organizations own a large number of enterprises. The amount of drug money alone invested in legal business is estimated at $200 billion to $500 billion. The number of businesses owned by criminals has been growing in direct proportion to those owned by respectable people.
With criminal-owned businesses mushrooming at such a pace, a time will come when the world economy will find itself under the underworld's control. It's very difficult to establish whether a company manager has connections with narcobusiness or whether an enterprise has been bought in order to launder dirty cash. Half of the daily international money transfers are believed to be laundered in areas with offshore banks and/or tax havens.