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Russian Organized Crime

Russian organized crime is ubiquitous - it has penetrated state structure in Russia and has control over a large portion of Russian banks. The illegal activity that Russian organized crime engages in ranges from money laundering to arms dealing in Africa and the Balkans to opium trade from Afghanistan to Western Europe, even including Colombian cocaine trafficking and cybercrime (Bakowski, 2011). After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian organized crime seized the opportunities presented with the privatization of certain aspects of the ecomony, banking being the biggest fish. Gaining control over most of the Russian banks in a highly underregulated environment allows Russian organized crime to launder money and otherwise commit bank fraud and even offer money laundering to other organized crime syndicates as a fee for service offering. Russian organized crime also engages in such things as extortion, murder for hire, trafficking in endangered species, counterfeit goods, gems, timber, precious metals, and human trafficking in many forms, and have established themselves as one of the most widespread criminal organizations in the world (Bakowski, 2011).

One of the things to come from the fall of the Soviet Union was the privatization of much of the economy and even parts of military supply. Many Soviet scientists and weapons experts found themselves out of jobs and were willing to sell their knowledge to Russian organized crime. Russian organized crime has been known to assist the Colombian drug cartels in building a submarine to use for drug trafficking with the information they bought from these experts (Bakowski, 2011).

Organized crime is hard enough to fight in and of itself, but when government officials and police are complicit in the illegal activity, it makes it that much harder for it to even be tracked, much less dealt with in any reasonable capacity. The way the Russian government does business is not at all the way we think it should be done in the US, but corruption, favoritism, and illegal deals are rather de rigueur in Russian politics and business (Grigg, 1996). This really should not be a suprise to anyone, as there are so many former KGB and Soviet military officers that are in the current Russian government who are familiar with and may even prefer the ways of the old Soviet Union, keeping the ruling class wealthy and in power (Grigg, 1996).

Bakowski, P. (2011). Russian organized crime: The EU perspective. Library of European parliament. Retrieved from: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/201207/20120730ATT49511/20120730ATT49511EN.pdf

Grigg, W. G. (1996). Dirty cops in the former soviet union run both sides of the law. The organized crime registry. Retreived from: http://orgcrime.tripod.com/ruscartel.htm

Tiezzi, S. (2015). China's growing drug problem. The Diplomat. Retrieved from: http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/chinas-growing-drug-problem/

UNODC. (2013). Transnational organized crime in West Africa: A threat assessment. Retrieved from http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/West_Africa_TOCTA_2013_EN.pdf

UNODC. (2013). Transnational organized crime in East Asia and the Pacific: A threat assessment. Retrieved from http://www.unodc.org/documents/southeastasiaandpacific//Publications/2013/TOCTA_EAP_web.pdf