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ORGANISED CRIME INC. - THE Global Business Success Story
Peter Lilley gives us a behind the scenes tour of the world’s biggest business.
You are standing in the downtown area of any major city of the world. Towering above you is a regional office of one of the major multinationals. You are gazing in awe at Organized Crime Inc. (you can check them out at organizedcrimeinc.com) – although the name above the door will probably not be that. The trading style shown will probably be something innocuous and vacuous to reflect the global omnipresent scope of the business. You have read somewhere that OCI is estimated to gross at least $1.5 trillion (that’s a staggering $1,500,000,000,000!) every year. That’s ten times the turnover of General Motors and eight times the GDP of Switzerland. The building is high tech, opulent and up market. At five o’clock every afternoon you need to take cover to avoid the rampaging army of employees released from their daily toil. The company pay its taxes, treat its employees well, contributes to local charities and is an all round good corporate citizen.
You may wonder why at street level (dependent on local customs and laws) you are confronted by girls who, resplendent in their neon lit cubicles, are offering sexual services of all descriptions. However, like everything else in this building they are merely part of a greater whole: either creating illegal funds or helping to metamorphose it into something approaching respectability. Just like any other multinational corporation, security of the building is tight: however, once you have signed in and got your security pass you can take a chance and wander about.
What may surprise you is the sheer scale and extent of their involvement and investment in worldwide business: from football clubs to casinos, from fruit machines to real estate, from washing machines to sports equipment, from car dealers to launderettes. What won’t surprise you is the army of bankers, professional advisors and consultants they employ. You almost wish you worked for them yourself. Welcome to Organized Crime Inc, The Business Success Story of the last millennium.
"Organized criminals are more organized than we are."
(DAVID BLUNKETT, UK HOME SECRETARY, NOVEMBER 2002)
Organized Crime Inc does not somehow operate in glorious isolation. All of these “gangsters” (much as I hate the term because of its glorified connotations) are actively attacking businesses – and operating as a business – across the world:
Colombian cartels
These cartels are highly organized, well equipped, well financed, formidable and totally entrenched in their country of origin. The US Government commented that ‘the leaders of these international drug organizations have built powerful financial, transportation, intelligence and communications empires that rival those of many small governments’. The Cali cartel is said to be worth $206 billion. Its two leaders, the brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez, were sentenced to ten years imprisonment in January 1997 but allegedly continue running their operations from jail. Cocaine and heroin trafficking into the United States is their main business but they also do a nice sideline in contract killing.
One unforeseen by-product of the United States war on terrorism is that the previous unremitting focus on Colombia has decisively shifted, with unpredictable future consequences.
Mexican cartels
Just as with the Colombians, the drug gangs have made sizeable inroads into corrupt politicians and political structures. The cartel is known for its importation of large quantities of controlled substances and its propensity for violence.
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