Organised crime gangs prove hard to pin down

Date: 17/04/1997

WHEN Europe's justice ministers sit down later this month to try to work out how to tackle organised crime, one of the first things they will have to do is try to agree on what they are talking about.

Despite repeated vocal attacks on the activities of drug barons, prostitution rackets and money-laundering operations, the fact remains that there is as yet no universally agreed definition of what precisely constitutes organised crime.

“Organised crime is very widespread, but no one knows exactly what it is,” explains Peter Csonka, an expert on the subject who is currently preparing an extensive report on the problem for the Council of Europe.

At present, different member states often have varying criteria for assessing what precisely constitutes organised crime and differing legal approaches for dealing with it.

In Italy, it is possible to prosecute suspected criminals simply for belonging to certain organisations - such as the Neapolitan Camorra.

In the UK, on the other hand, people tend to be charged with 'conspiracy' to commit a particular crime if they are thought to be part of a criminal operation. Organised crime groups, unlike politically motivated terrorist organisations, are not of themselves proscribed.

The French have yet another approach with laws aimed at tackling 'associations of wrongdoers'. However, these rules were drafted long before the era of international drug cartels and multi-billion-ecu criminal empires and are really more applicable to small street gangs.

But attempts are being made to at least establish criteria for measuring the problem.

The EU's Council of Ministers has already gone so far as to draw up a list of characteristics by which organised crime groups can be identified.

This list, which is intended only as a guideline, lays down 11 points, six of which should be fulfilled if a criminal organisation is to be defined as organised.

Groups should consist of more than two people and each member should have a specific task. The members must have worked together for a “considerably long or indeterminate” time and carry out their activities according to mutually understood rules.

Organisations must be suspected of having committed serious offences and be operational in more than one country. They will use violence or intimidation as part of their regular working practices and employ either commercial or “commercial-type” structures to control the profits of their activities.

Money laundering can be seen as a characteristic of criminal organisations, as can attempting to influence politicians, the media, public administrations, the legal community or national economies.

Finally, a criminal organisation can be defined by the fact that it works for profit or power.

But critics maintain that such a list will only ever be of limited use while approaches to dealing with wrongdoers differ between states.

Member states may be able to recognise organised criminals but will not be able to stop them setting up operations across the Union, taking advantage of the big rewards in high-risk countries while seeking refuge in 'safe-haven' states free from the fear of prosecution, they argue.

But Jürgen Storbeck, head of the fledgling European police agency, Europol, strongly contests this gloomy prognosis.

“It would indeed take many years to agree on a common definition of organised crime, but I do not actually think one is necessary,” he suggests.

Storbeck argues that a great deal can be done through mutual recognition and cooperation between member states' police forces.

Until the convention setting up Europol is ratified by all 15 EU governments, Storbeck can only play a limited role in helping to coordinate the fight against organised crime.

At present, the only fully functioning part of the organisation is the Europol Drugs Unit (EDU), set up under a special ministerial agreement in 1993.

The EDU has a fairly specific remit, with competence to act in six clearly defined areas. As the organisation's name suggests, it can coordinate police cooperation in the fight against the illegal drugs trade. It can, however, also act in the areas of illegal immigration, the trade in human beings, trafficking in stolen cars and nuclear material, and money laundering.

As this list coincides largely with the major areas of activity of organised crime gangs, it is clear that a fair amount is already being done at European level to tackle the problem.

Storbeck says one of the areas where EDU coordination is bearing fruit is in what are called 'controlled deliveries'.

“If a lorry coming up through the Balkans is stopped at the Hungary-Austrian border and found to contain heroin, then you could arrest the driver and that would be a small victory,” he says.

But the Europol chief argues that this rarely allows law enforcement services to catch the really big fish.

“These couriers tend to be recruited in bars or cafés in countries such as Turkey and have no real idea whom they are working for,” he explains.

Storbeck points out that it is actually far more useful to follow a suspect vehicle to its final destination, where it is often possible to apprehend major national drug distributors.

“This is a very good system, but it requires cooperation between many police forces,” he says.

If the hypothetical lorry's final destination is London or Antwerp, it will have to pass through several more countries before ending its journey, for example.

“In the past, it took several days to organise such cooperation, but we have to sort things out within a matter of hours. Any longer and our suspects will become suspicious. By working through the EDU, it is possible to react this quickly,” explains Storbeck.

He is, however, by no means complacent about the work he is doing and is desperate for EU governments to ratify the Europol convention so that his organisation can really begin to operate to its full potential.

Until all 15 member states have signed up to the convention, the organisation cannot set up the main centralised computer database which will be the centrepiece of its operations.

“We need approval in all of the national parliaments before we are able to store sensitive personal data,” explains Storbeck.

European leaders agreed at their summit in Dublin last December that they would all sign the convention by the end of this year. But so far only one country, the UK, has actually done so.

But even when Europol does come fully 'on-stream', it is debatable how much the agency will be able to do to tackle organised crime - by definition, a global rather than a purely European phenomenon.

Barring the Italian Mafia 'families', all of the current major players on the international criminal scene are based in non-EU countries. Organised crime in the Union is to a very large extent in the hands of gangs from the former Soviet Union, South America, Turkey, Africa and Asia.

“It does not make very much sense to look at organised crime at European level when it is a global phenomenon which does not respect borders,” argues Csonka.

He says the international police cooperation network Interpol is already working to tackle such crime and points to attempts at the United Nations to draw up a convention on the phenomenon as the only real way forward.

Storbeck, unsurprisingly, rejects such arguments.

“No one questions the need for the FBI in the United States,” he insists, stressing he is always willing to cooperate with Interpol but arguing that his organisation is fundamentally different from its international counterpart.

“Interpol basically enables policemen to talk to each other. We are trying to facilitate some sort of common European approach to police cooperation,” he argues.

But any amount of cooperation can only be truly effective if it is backed up by the resources needed to take on the crime gangs.

Given that reliable estimates suggest organised crime generates up to 400 billion ecu a year - more than the combined gross domestic product of Spain and Portugal - it seems unlikely that much will change in the foreseeable future.