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Globe and Mail, Canada
April 12 2008
Around the world in 80 crimes
JULIAN SHER
April 12, 2008
McMAFIA
A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld
By Misha Glenny
Anansi, 375 pages, $29.25
A middle-class woman sips her white wine in a comfortable
neighbourhood in Surrey, England, when a knock on the door announces
a pizza delivery. The man at the door promptly shoots her several
times in the head.
It's a case of mistaken identity. The assassin was after her sister,
a BBC producer whose Armenian husband had gotten into some shady
dealing with Chechens. The entire family has since gone into hiding,
on the run from the rising crime lords in the former Soviet Union.
Misha Glenny starts his rollicking book with that anecdote and never
lets the reader go, determined to shake us into realizing none of us
are safe in the end from the tentacles of the new global underworld.
Glenny, a former BBC correspondent, pulls off with aplomb what is
always the biggest challenge for true-crime writers: making it
matter.
He reveals the politics of crime and the crime in politics. Glenny's
central thesis is that two powerful currents in the 1990s - the fall
of communism and the liberalization of international financial and
commodity markets - unleashed a golden age for capitalism but also
for crooks. "They were also good capitalists and entrepreneurs," he
notes wryly, who "saw real opportunity in this dazzling mixture of
upheaval, hope and uncertainty."
Glenny first spotted this trend covering the wars in former
Yugoslavia for the BBC in 1990s. But, as he says, "Nobody had
connected the dots." He sets out to do that, sketching a map of the
world you thought you knew. But you have been reading the wrong road
signs.
McMafia takes you down the "new silk route" from Asia to Europe, a
criminal highway that extends from the former Soviet republics to the
troubled Balkans and the turmoil in Pakistan and Afghanistan,
allowing for the swift and easy transfer of people, narcotics and
cash. Glenny takes you along the silnice hanby, the Highway of Shame,
linking Dresden and Prague via the heart of the old Czechoslovakia,
where young Eastern European women sell themselves for a few dollars.
Few countries escape Glenny's penetrating wrath. Israel has let
itself be colonized by "oligarchs and organized crime bosses" from
Russia. Dubai has become the "washing machine of the world," where
money-laundering is blatant and easy. The Nigerians perpetuating
those ubiquitous e-mail scams - don't laugh, one survey estimated
they pulled in more than $3-billion from 38 countries - grew up in
the "sewers of Nigeria corruptocracy." They are simply mimicking the
criminal behaviour of their "thieving elite." In China, a country
that once wiped out its opium shame, the heroin trade has returned
with a vengeance. China, in turn, is now turning North Korea -
renowned as the world's largest producer of virtually undetectable
counterfeit U.S. $100 bills - into an economic vassal.
Even British Columbia's booming marijuana trade comes in for searing
criticism. (A disclosure is in order here: Glenny cites a book I
co-authored on the Hells Angels as "very revealing" about Canada's
politics of crime.) Assuming law enforcement estimates of at least a
$4-billion annual trade in B.C. bud, involving 100,000 workers,
Glenny argues "western Canada is home to the largest per capita
concentration of organized criminal syndicates in the world."
What is remarkable is how businesslike the new crime bosses are. The
Firm, one of the super gangs in South Africa, operated an informal
bank, offering start-up capital to prospective members. Colombian
drug lords, "like good global entrepreneurs ... sought out new
marketing and distribution strategies" when they realized the
collapse of the Berlin Wall offered a new middle class and fresh
markets.
But they are a seedy and dangerous bunch as well: "Nixon," a
narco-trafficker in Bogota who "snorted, screwed and shot his way
across Colombia." Chen Kai, part of China's "political criminal
nexus" between local tycoons and Communist Party bosses. And Viktor
Bout, the "merchant of death," who was arrested recently for selling
arms to a Colombian guerrilla group, the latest in a long list of
unsavoury clients.
And there are the heart-wrenching tales of their victims, such as
Ludmila, the sex slave in Tel Aviv who was tricked into coming to
Israel only to be brutalized, raped and infected with HIV.
If Glenny's portrait of crime is grim, his prognosis for the future
is even bleaker. He lashes out at "unimaginative politicians who lack
the vision or interest to address the structural inequities in the
global economy upon which crime and instability thrive." He concludes
that a cynical Russia, an incompetent European Union, a hostile
United States and the unstoppably ambitious China have combined to
usher in a "vigorous springtime for both global corporations and
transnational organized crime."
Glenny's book is bound to dissatisfy some. Not everyone will buy his
cogent arguments to legalize drugs, although he points out the
billions spent on the so-called "war on drugs" has simply left an
industry that has merely grown in size, profits and human sacrifice.
He notes that cybercrime represents perhaps the "greatest challenge
for public law enforcement," but - except for the Nigerian scam
artists - devotes little time to it. And one would wish there was
more on the good guys: We only meet a handful of investigators, and
then only briefly, who are trying to do battle against the behemoth.
But Glenny's book should be appreciated for the powerful wake-up call
it is. Think of it as a Lonely Planet Guide of Organized Crime. Don't
leave home without it. Our brave new world of globalization may be
flat, but it also very, very crooked.
Julian Sher is the author of five books about crime and the justice
system. The latest is One Child at a Time: Inside the Police Hunt to
Rescue Children from Online Predators.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet /story/LAC.20080412.BKMCMA12/TPStory/Entertainment
April 12 2008
Around the world in 80 crimes
JULIAN SHER
April 12, 2008
McMAFIA
A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld
By Misha Glenny
Anansi, 375 pages, $29.25
A middle-class woman sips her white wine in a comfortable
neighbourhood in Surrey, England, when a knock on the door announces
a pizza delivery. The man at the door promptly shoots her several
times in the head.
It's a case of mistaken identity. The assassin was after her sister,
a BBC producer whose Armenian husband had gotten into some shady
dealing with Chechens. The entire family has since gone into hiding,
on the run from the rising crime lords in the former Soviet Union.
Misha Glenny starts his rollicking book with that anecdote and never
lets the reader go, determined to shake us into realizing none of us
are safe in the end from the tentacles of the new global underworld.
Glenny, a former BBC correspondent, pulls off with aplomb what is
always the biggest challenge for true-crime writers: making it
matter.
He reveals the politics of crime and the crime in politics. Glenny's
central thesis is that two powerful currents in the 1990s - the fall
of communism and the liberalization of international financial and
commodity markets - unleashed a golden age for capitalism but also
for crooks. "They were also good capitalists and entrepreneurs," he
notes wryly, who "saw real opportunity in this dazzling mixture of
upheaval, hope and uncertainty."
Glenny first spotted this trend covering the wars in former
Yugoslavia for the BBC in 1990s. But, as he says, "Nobody had
connected the dots." He sets out to do that, sketching a map of the
world you thought you knew. But you have been reading the wrong road
signs.
McMafia takes you down the "new silk route" from Asia to Europe, a
criminal highway that extends from the former Soviet republics to the
troubled Balkans and the turmoil in Pakistan and Afghanistan,
allowing for the swift and easy transfer of people, narcotics and
cash. Glenny takes you along the silnice hanby, the Highway of Shame,
linking Dresden and Prague via the heart of the old Czechoslovakia,
where young Eastern European women sell themselves for a few dollars.
Few countries escape Glenny's penetrating wrath. Israel has let
itself be colonized by "oligarchs and organized crime bosses" from
Russia. Dubai has become the "washing machine of the world," where
money-laundering is blatant and easy. The Nigerians perpetuating
those ubiquitous e-mail scams - don't laugh, one survey estimated
they pulled in more than $3-billion from 38 countries - grew up in
the "sewers of Nigeria corruptocracy." They are simply mimicking the
criminal behaviour of their "thieving elite." In China, a country
that once wiped out its opium shame, the heroin trade has returned
with a vengeance. China, in turn, is now turning North Korea -
renowned as the world's largest producer of virtually undetectable
counterfeit U.S. $100 bills - into an economic vassal.
Even British Columbia's booming marijuana trade comes in for searing
criticism. (A disclosure is in order here: Glenny cites a book I
co-authored on the Hells Angels as "very revealing" about Canada's
politics of crime.) Assuming law enforcement estimates of at least a
$4-billion annual trade in B.C. bud, involving 100,000 workers,
Glenny argues "western Canada is home to the largest per capita
concentration of organized criminal syndicates in the world."
What is remarkable is how businesslike the new crime bosses are. The
Firm, one of the super gangs in South Africa, operated an informal
bank, offering start-up capital to prospective members. Colombian
drug lords, "like good global entrepreneurs ... sought out new
marketing and distribution strategies" when they realized the
collapse of the Berlin Wall offered a new middle class and fresh
markets.
But they are a seedy and dangerous bunch as well: "Nixon," a
narco-trafficker in Bogota who "snorted, screwed and shot his way
across Colombia." Chen Kai, part of China's "political criminal
nexus" between local tycoons and Communist Party bosses. And Viktor
Bout, the "merchant of death," who was arrested recently for selling
arms to a Colombian guerrilla group, the latest in a long list of
unsavoury clients.
And there are the heart-wrenching tales of their victims, such as
Ludmila, the sex slave in Tel Aviv who was tricked into coming to
Israel only to be brutalized, raped and infected with HIV.
If Glenny's portrait of crime is grim, his prognosis for the future
is even bleaker. He lashes out at "unimaginative politicians who lack
the vision or interest to address the structural inequities in the
global economy upon which crime and instability thrive." He concludes
that a cynical Russia, an incompetent European Union, a hostile
United States and the unstoppably ambitious China have combined to
usher in a "vigorous springtime for both global corporations and
transnational organized crime."
Glenny's book is bound to dissatisfy some. Not everyone will buy his
cogent arguments to legalize drugs, although he points out the
billions spent on the so-called "war on drugs" has simply left an
industry that has merely grown in size, profits and human sacrifice.
He notes that cybercrime represents perhaps the "greatest challenge
for public law enforcement," but - except for the Nigerian scam
artists - devotes little time to it. And one would wish there was
more on the good guys: We only meet a handful of investigators, and
then only briefly, who are trying to do battle against the behemoth.
But Glenny's book should be appreciated for the powerful wake-up call
it is. Think of it as a Lonely Planet Guide of Organized Crime. Don't
leave home without it. Our brave new world of globalization may be
flat, but it also very, very crooked.
Julian Sher is the author of five books about crime and the justice
system. The latest is One Child at a Time: Inside the Police Hunt to
Rescue Children from Online Predators.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet /story/LAC.20080412.BKMCMA12/TPStory/Entertainment