"Corruption and Organized Crime in Europe: Illegal partnerships" [Book Review]

      Gounev, Philip; Ruggiero, Vincenzo et al.
      Corruption and Organized Crime in Europe: Illegal partnerships
      Taylor and Francis 2012

Review by Alessandro D’Alessio

With “Corruption and Organized Crime in Europe” the authors aim to define the relationships between corruption and criminal organizations within the 27 Member States of the European Union. Ruggiero and Gounev, through theoretical arguments and empirical data analysis, describe and succeed in outlining different aspects of these phenomena with a deep analysis that concerns many different fields.

The book is split in two distinct parts. The first one deals with definitional problems related to the notions of organized crime and corruption that often differ from one place to another due to cultural or political background diversities as well as with different countries legislations. Ruggiero analyses also various variables suggesting that the quantitative aspects, the number of the individuals involved in a criminal group, the notion of “continuing basis” and “professionalism” help to define what criminal organizations really are. Throughout the book they consider organized crime as “crime in organization” highlighting the importance of the legal-illegal nexus. This latter refers to when organized groups gain access to the official economy and to the world of institutional politics. Through the notion of criminal networks the authors help the reader understand the relationship between corruption and organized crime because the entry into licit business has to be favoured by a web of contacts with politicians and members of the economic sector. They provide also a wide range of observations to what concerns the relationships between corruption and democracy leading to the idea that corruption exacerbates the moral and political de-skilling of the electorate.

Then the inquiry moves to a deeper description that involves public bodies, the private sector and criminal markets.

As for the public bodies the writers show how corruption is used as a tool of influence and also a way to communicate with countries’ administrations as well as the judiciary systems, the police and the politicians. However the data offered by the EU and other organizations, such as Transparency International, display several difficulties in the measurement of the issue. Introducing the concept of “white-collar” offences they underline how, especially in certain areas such as Italy or Southern France, local criminal elites have always been colluded with local politics. Ruggiero and Gounev outline that corrupt relationships can be sporadic or symbiotic. This latter type can be found in specific towns where parallel power structures are developed and democratic principles are simply subverted leading to the phenomenon of “state-capture”.

In the following chapter Gounev describes the scope of private sector corruption for criminal organizations that is to penetrate and take advantage of a private company against the will of its owner. He explains that criminals do this mainly because they want to facilitate criminal activities or launder profits from other crimes. He suggests also some anti-corruption measures for companies such as following the international standards contained in the United Nations Convention against Corruption, internal whistleblowing and anti-bribery policies even though criminal behaviours are, in the majority of companies, detected by outside bodies (police investigations).

With regard to criminal markets the authors aim to demonstrate how corruption facilitates particular “organized criminal activities” such as the illegal cigarettes market, prostitution and trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation, illicit drugs market, vehicle theft and extortion racketeering. They give wide information concerning different aspects of corruption (administrative, police, judicial, private sector corruption etc.) to each of the illegal activities studied.

The second part of the book analyses in depth some European countries and how rooted the two phenomena are. The countries are Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Russia, Spain and UK. Tihomir Bezlov and Gounev describe the Bulgarian situation affirming that the scale of corruption that has permeated public and private sectors in the country since the early 1990s is vast. The four main institutions (political, judicial, police and custom) seem still to be seriously corrupt. The chapter begins with an overview of Bulgaria recent history that helps the reader in learning the current state of the institutions. The same formula has been adopted in the chapter regarding Russia because it’s useful to study the transition period to market economy in order to understand the social and economic changes that these countries are still facing. In Eastern Europe white-collar offenders are not considered as something separate from organized crime while the economic transition and privatisation processes have strongly enforced criminal activities and the creation of new criminal organizations.  In the case of Russia it’s interesting the historical overview that tends to underline that cultural behaviours, like the patron-client relationship, of the 18^th Century Tsarist Russia have been firstly embedded in the Soviet Russia after the 1917 October Revolution and then maintained after the fall of Communism in 1989. This chapter, written by Paddy Rawlinson, illustrates that the URSS was characterized by a widespread corruption as an intrinsic component of the system itself. Nowadays a lack of political will in the fight against corruption is observable despite Putin’s and Medvedev’s reforms announcements.

While France and UK are described as countries characterized by low levels of corruption Spain, Greece and Italy are facing serious problems in this sense. Spain, whose chapter is written by Alejandra Gòmez-Céspedes, is defined as a criminal hub with severe drugs and illegal immigrations problems. With the help of charts, provided by the Ministry of the Interior every year, the reader can be fully aware of the huge amount of drugs that pass through this country to reach the whole Europe. Greece has got similar problems and has to deal also with immigrant and indigenous organized crime. On the one hand there are the Albanians, Russians, Romanians, Turkish, Iraqi and Bulgarians. Every group is specialized in a particular criminal activity like drug trafficking, counterfeiting or cigarette smuggling. On the other hand Greek organized criminal groups often provide means of transportation for cocaine across the Atlantic route along with other criminal actions (extortions, human trafficking). Regarding Italy, Ruggiero describes the main criminal organizations (‘Ndrangheta, Camorra, Cosa Nostra and Sacra Corona Unita) very accurately and depicting them as organizations that constitute “power systems” because of their continuous contacts with the “official world” of politics. He narrates the story of these groups beginning from the unification of the Italian peninsula, a fundamental approach to figure out such a complex phenomenon. Citing the State Audit Board (the Corte dei Conti), Ruggiero explains that corruption is widespread throughout the country and shows that there is a “mafia method” in conducting business and doing politics. Moreover the infiltration of mafia organizations is very strong across the regions of Southern Italy, especially in Calabria where the ‘Ndrangheta has enjoyed little attention by institutions and public opinion. In the end Ruggiero underlines the importance of the violence factor; he outlines that the elite in Italy has never renounced violence and has never really managed to make the transition to a modern social order based on legality.

In conclusion I find this book very well written, accurate and supported by strong empirical evidence. The general-to-specific pattern turns out to be very useful to the reader and the countries chosen are helpful in defining the specific aspects of corruption, the organized crime and the related features. My only criticism is that the cultural and structural differences between mafia and “common” organized crime are not examined in depth as well as the economic power that such criminal groups exert on the European capitalistic system. Apart from that, I feel to suggest this book to everyone is interested in these issues and wants to know more about the world he lives in.