The Private Sector and Organized Crime
Criminal Entrepreneurship, Illicit Profits, and Private Sector Security Governance
Preview
Book Description
This book contributes to the literature on organized crime by providing a detailed account of the various nuances of what happens when criminal organizations misuse or penetrate legitimate businesses. It advances the existing scholarship on attacks, infiltration, and capture of legal businesses by organized crime and sheds light on the important role the private sector can play to fight back. It considers a range of industries from bars and restaurants to labour-intensive enterprises such as construction and waste management, to sectors susceptible to illicit activities including transportation, wholesale and retail trade, and businesses controlled by fragmented legislation such as gambling.
Organized criminal groups capitalize on legitimate businesses beleaguered by economic downturns, government regulations, natural disasters, societal conflict, and the COVID-19 pandemic. To survive, some private companies have even become the willing partners of criminal organizations. Thus, the relationships between licit businesses and organized crime are highly varied and can range from victimization of businesses to willing collusion and even exploitation of organized crime by the private sector – albeit with arrangements that typically allow plausible deniability. In other words, these relationships are highly diverse and create a complex reality which is the focus of the articles presented here.
This book will appeal to students, academics, and policy practitioners with an interest in organized crime. It will also provide important supplementary reading for undergraduate and graduate courses on topics such as transnational security issues, transnational organized crime, international criminal justice, criminal finance, non-state actors, international affairs, comparative politics, and economics and business courses.
Table of Contents
1. Theorizing the Linkages between the Private Sector and Organized Crime, Yuliya Zabyelina; 2. A Review of Methods in Research on Organized Crime Infiltration of Legitimate Businesses, Francesca M. Calamunci; 3. Organized Crime and the Haulage Sector Livia Wagner and Lucia Bird Ruiz Benitez de Lugo; 4. Private Port Authorities and Organized Crime, Luca Storti, Anna Sergi, and Yuliya Zabyelina; 5. Information Technology and Communications Providers’ Measures against Organized Crime, Marie-Helen Maras; 6. Organized Crime and the Hydrocarbons Industry. David Soud; 7. Trafficking in Persons and the Hotel Industry, Yuliya Zabyelina and Thi Hoang; 8. Organized Crime in the Waste Management Industry, Serena Favarin and Kimberley L. Thachuk; 9. Organized Crime in the Fisheries Sector, Gohar A. Petrossian, Kimberley L. Thachuk, and Yuliya Zabyelina; 10. Organized Forest Crimes: Charcoal and Timber Trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Daan P. Van Uhm, Milou Tjoonk, and Eliode Bakole; 11. Organized Crime in the Agri-food Industry, Alice Rizzuti; 12. Organized Crime and the Retail Sector, Marco Dugato and Caterina Paternoster; 13. Organized Crime Money Laundering through Online Gambling Businesses in Great Britain, Peter Duncan and Nicholas Lord; 14. Private Art Businesses and Organized Crime, Donna Yates and Christoph Rausch; 15. Organized Crime and the Pharmaceutical Industry, Yuliya Zabyelina and Stephen Noguera; 16. Organized Crime and Tobacco Companies, Jay P. Kennedy; 17. Organized Crime and the Private Security Industry, Anja P. Jakobi; 18. Private Sector Criminal Risk Assessment and Risk Management, Phil Williams and Colin P. Clarke
Editor(s)
Biography
Yuliya Zabyelina is Associate Professor of International Criminal Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), USA.
Kimberley L. Thachuk is a senior analyst and educator focusing on transnational security issues, including corruption; organized crime and terrorism; human, drug, and arms trafficking; and environment, health, and energy.
Reviews
An important collection of innovative research and analysis on the two-way relationship between organized crime and legitimate business. Exploitation by organized crime is shown to have consequences in both the legitimate and illicit sectors with insights provided in this volume to anticipate and reduce future harms across the many products and services where organized crime and the private sector meet.
Jay Albanese
Wilder School of Government & Public Affairs
Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how the worlds of business, crime and politics intersect. More importantly it demonstrates the devastating impacts of illicit markets on the economy, and on societies the world over. Through diverse sectoral analyses it shows why it is imperative to up our game in a more strategic and holistic way. An indispensable policy tool.
Mark Shaw
Director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)
An important collection of innovative research and analysis on the two-way relationship between organized crime and legitimate business. Exploitation by organized crime is shown to have consequences in both the legitimate and illicit sectors with insights provided in this volume to anticipate and reduce future harms across the many products and services where organized crime and the private sector meet.
Jay Albanese
Wilder School of Government & Public Affairs
Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how the worlds of business, crime and politics intersect. More importantly it demonstrates the devastating impacts of illicit markets on the economy, and on societies the world over. Through diverse sectoral analyses it shows why it is imperative to up our game in a more strategic and holistic way. An indispensable policy tool.
Mark Shaw
Director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)