More Money, Less Risk

Over the last years there has been much talk of organized crime infiltrating the legal economy, which is said to have increased in the aftermath of the crisis. Already in 2009, the heads of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime stated that the credit crunch affecting the banking system could open a flank for the penetration of criminal organizations, which had hitherto been kept at bay by the tightening of anti-terrorism controls and sanctions in the wake of 9/11.

It's not only the financial system that is exposed to criminal penetration, but the whole corporate system, which has been hard hit by the crisis. Furthermore, businesses have an additional attraction from the mob's point of view: controls, investigations, sanctions, and penalties for wrongdoing by firms are much lower, sometimes negligible, with respect to charges for criminal activities. From a cost-benefit point of view, therefore, economic crimes are to be preferred by mobsters, as long as profits are significant in relation to the diminished risk of being caught. Early findings by national and international agencies, such as the Italian Agency for Internal Security and Europol (SOCTA 2013 Report), highlight the new trend in the behavior of criminal organizations in the wake of the crisis. On one side, the decrease in consumer purchasing power has induced criminal organizations to start counterfeiting mass consumption products (foods, detergents, cosmetics, medicines), too. On the other, accrued competitive pressures are a push toward cost cutting, thereby encouraging illegal immigration and black market labor. Also, spending reviews and cuts in the salaries of public employees can facilitate the growth of bribery and corruption. But it is legal businesses that are most at risk of mafia contamination, due to their general lack of liquidity and the assets and earnings problems that characterize this difficult economic phase. This opens two major opportunities for criminal organizations, which are awash in cash and have considerable coercive means at their disposal. First of all, the enhanced possibility of diversifying their outlets for money laundering, by easily acquiring additional firms to disperse the inflow of dirty money into the legal economy via a myriad of operations that are less easy to monitor. Secondly, the opportunity to achieve market dominance in certain industry segments, by acquiring firms that are either suppliers or customers of firms they already control. In general, "easy acquisitions" enable organized crime to strengthen its grip in various localities, and increase its power to influence voters working in those companies, due to their higher ability to redistribute wealth and status to their affiliates. This leads one to ponder: faced with this criminal pandemic, are current criminal investigation tools enough to defend the legal economy or are stronger remedies to be sought?