Globalization Boosts Europe's Gangsters

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In the northeast, Lithuanian groups maintain a "central role" while St Petersburg is the most important logistical nexus, with sources feeding into the EU via Russia – particularly via Kaliningrad, the little patch of the Russian Federation that sits smack in the middle of European Union territory – and also Ukraine and Belarus.

The report also finds an increasing trend of indoor cannabis plantations in EU member states, and that victims of human trafficking, or irregular immigrants repaying the cost of their journey, are often exploited in such operations.

Low-cost airlines

Low-cost airlines have also become a valuable addition to the gangsters' toolbox, says the report.

"Document counterfeiting and the abuse of the transport sector, mainly low cost airlines, are major facilitating factors in [human trafficking]."

The paper goes on to say that such flights have been a gift for drug distribution.

"The global interconnectivity of passenger airlines affords crime groups a wide variety of routing options to directly target local markets throughout the EU. In exploiting this means, [such groups] are using the method of Transit-Point-Stacking (TPS), in which they implement a flight plan consisting of multiple sequential flights in an effort to hide the initial origin of couriers."

Such developments come as no surprise to Letizia Paoli, a professor at the University of Leuven and a past advisor to Europol on organised crime.

"Liberalisation, airlines, China, it's all really part of the same phenomenon," she told EUobserver.

"Organised crime is the price you pay for a more open market economy," she said. "You don't want to have to check every container coming into Antwerp or Rotterdam, control every person crossing a border, but if you choose to do so, to open up legitimate trade, you have to take into account that these processes will also be exploited for illegal purposes.

"There's nothing you can do, unless you want to hinder legitimate businesses."

"The same with these airlines – we've all profited from low-cost airlines. Mobility has enormously increased over the past two decades, but this increased mobility likewise offers instruments that can be exploited with criminal aims."

Meanwhile, note the authors of the report, while the global economy is in one of its roughest patches in decades, organised crime could actually be profiting from the downturn.

With lower purchasing power, consumers may look more to counterfeit products, while employers aim to hire cheaper labour, making irregular – and much cheaper – workers more attractive.

The report also wonders whether the recession may mean people take more drugs, which "might give criminals an opportunity to keep profits high during the crisis."

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