FROM THE DETECTIVE’S LIBRARY: MCMAFIA

A recent text chronicling international organized crime, MCMAFIA by Misha Glenny, has provided some interesting and educational reading for this true crime buff.

“With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets”.
Did you realize that roughly one-fifth of global GDP is by illegal trade?
While providing a very authoritative look at Russian organized crime, it also presents a compelling narrative on organized – and not so organized – illegal trade throughout other parts of the world, and its impact on our everyday life.
I had not realized the high level of trade in illegal, untaxed cigarettes throughout the world. Having some first hand experience with untaxed cigarettes and the violence that can ensue among dealers, it is no wonder that, on an even higher scale, this is being conducted throughout the world.

What about Israeli organized crime?

I did not know that the Israeli crime syndicates more closely resemble the Sicilian Mafia than its Russian counterparts. The Israeli crime groups are gathered around families, much the same way the Sicilians are.
“When you have crime based on families, then issues such as honor and vendettas come into play,” states Professor Amir, a leading Israeli criminologist.
Gambling had been the traditional industry around which the Israeli crime syndicates gathered and thrived. But in the 1990’s, they branched out and moved into an even more lucrative area. According to the U.S. DEA, the Israeli families continue to be a major element in the transfer of large shipments of Ecstasy from Belgium to the US. Europe is the top manufacturing base for this synthetic narcotic, Ecstasy. The main West European center being Amsterdam, although recently industrial-scale arrests and seizures have been made in Serbia and Bulgaria as well.
A 2003 State Department report indicated that Israel is the hub of global ecstasy trafficking, having branched out from Europe to the United States.
“Israel drug-trafficking organizations are the main source of distribution of the drug to groups in the U.S., using express mail services, commercial airlines, and recently using air cargo services,” the report states. For a country as dependent on American financial, political, and military support, this would seem to be an embarrassment to Israel.