ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Criminal syndicates across the European Union are co-opting legitimate businesses as a front for their nefarious activities. But now the bloc’s law enforcers have blown their cover wide open, reports Hartley Milner.

Crime agency Europol has unveiled “the most detailed report on criminal networks ever undertaken” in the EU, identifying 821 especially menacing gangs with a combined membership of more than 25,000 individuals.

Of these, 86 per cent are seamlessly able to infiltrate the legal economy to hide their crooked capers and launder dirty money, exploiting businesses across the sectors, from fruit importers and logistic companies to hotels, real estate and even nightclubs.

Europol reveals who the crime lords are, the activities they engage in, how their empires are organised, how and where they operate, the methods they employ to avoid detection and the degree of threat they pose to EU member states. A specific characteristic of these networks is the borderless nature of their structure, with 112 nationalities represented among their membership, the report says.

The leaders of 82 per cent of the most threatening gangs live in the main country where they carry out their illicit operations. Around six per cent run their empires from outside the EU, believing this puts them beyond the reach of the law. All head up multiple activities ranging from fraud, corruption and property crime to migrant smuggling and people trafficking, frequently backed up by bribery, intimidation and violence. Half are also involved in drug trafficking,
either as a standalone activity or as part of a portfolio.

One notorious crime boss unmasked is an Italian businessman of Argentinian origin living in Marbella, Spain, who specialises in drug trafficking and money laundering. He manages several outwardly lawful companies, including one importing bananas from Ecuador to the EU. He also owns sports centres in Marbella, commercial centres in Granada and multiple bars and restaurants.

In the shadows

“An Albanian accomplice based in Ecuador takes care of the import of cocaine from Colombia to Ecuador and the subsequent distribution to the EU. Ecuadorian fruit companies are used as a front for these criminal activities,” Europol says in its report, ‘Decoding the EU’s Most Threatening Criminal Networks’.

Massive hauls of narcotics have been hidden in banana shipments throughout Europe over the past 12 months. In February, British border force officers found more than 5670 kg of cocaine among a shipment at the port of Southampton on England’s south coast. The haul was estimated to be worth £450 million (€526.68 million), smashing the record for the biggest single seizure of hard drugs in the UK. Last year, Dutch customs agents found 7980 kg of cocaine inside crates of bananas in Rotterdam, and a police dog sniffed out over three tonnes of cocaine stashed in a case of the fruit at the Italian port of Gioia Tauro.

Europol also cites families from Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia cartel, one of the world’s most powerful, extensive and wealthy crime groups. Their profits come mainly from trafficking drugs from South America to Europe and Australia, but they are also involved in myriads of other activities, including arms dealing and tax fraud. They work in partnership with the Colombian ‘Gulf Clan’ and networks operating in Ecuador and multiple European countries. Proceeds from their crimes are invested in various European and South American countries, mainly in legitimate commercial activities.

Last year, 207 members of the ‘Ndrangheta mob were sentenced by an Italian tribunal to a combined 2,200 years on charges that included drug and arms trafficking, extortion and ‘mafia association’, a term in Italy’s penal code for members of organised crime groups. Two clan chiefs were also each locked up for 30 years.

Collaring a mafia crime don is quite a coup for policing agencies, as they employ cunning ruses to remain in the shadows. But not even a jail term deters some. Europol points to the leader of a criminal network with links to the western Balkans who runs his operations from a prison cell in Italy. From there, he is believed to direct his cronies on activities related to the trafficking of drugs and firearms. He is known to be active in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Cybercrime is an especially tough nut to crack. Yet last year European law enforcement agencies helped take down one of the world’s biggest online fraud networks. Genesis Market sold stolen login details, IP addresses and other data that make up the ‘digital fingerprint’ of companies and individuals, allowing fraudsters to take over and raid their accounts.

Online hacking

The group charged their hacker clients less than a dollar to several hundred dollars, depending on the amount and nature of the information. Especially lucrative are details that provide access to online bank and other financial accounts. Since 2018, Genesis Market had offered access to more than 80 million financial account credentials from over one-and-a-half million compromised computers around the world.

Another criminal network specialises in people smuggling. Irregular migrants pay up to €20,000 to enter the EU and clandestinely move on to further destinations within its borders. The gang advertises its illicit activities on social media platforms and by posting videos of successful transfers. Migrants are moved along two main routes, either from Croatia via Slovenia to Italy or from Serbia via Hungary to Austria.

Revenues from organised crime across the EU are almost incalculable, according to Europol. But it estimates they amount to at least €139 billion every year, or one per cent of the region’s annual GDP.

Impact on EU citizens

Presenting the report in April, Europol executive director Catherine De Bolle said its findings “make the invisible visible”. She continued: “These networks are agile, borderless, controlling and destructive. Criminal networks maximise their opportunities in the legal world. They infiltrate companies at a high level or set up their own legal business structures, most often in the EU.

“The longer they are active the more legal businesses structures they can set up, and this makes them stronger and helps them to remain under the radar. These growth and survival strategies allow more than a third of the most threatening networks to maintain their power and influence over long periods, even longer than 10 years.”

Criminal networks impact EU citizens personally. De Bolle said more than 70 per cent resort to corruption, undermining the “essential functions of state institutions and private businesses”. And they build and sustain their empires on fear and coercion.

“Citizens fear the consequences of reporting crime to the police and feel pressured by the gangs into compliance,” she said. “Their destructive nature is also made obvious by the high levels of violence of networks active in drug trafficking, by the enlistment of vulnerable youngsters and the high number of victims of exploitation and fraud, which is a serious concern.”

But De Bolle had this message for criminal gangs operating in Europe: “You can’t hide anymore. We know you are disrupting the security of the EU and our democracy and not respecting the rule of law. You know that we know you are interfering with our legal businesses structures – and now you know that we know who you are.”

She said the crime data collected from EU member states and 17 Europol partner countries will give national law enforcement agencies the edge they need to better target and conduct cross-border criminal investigations.

Criminal gangs were dealt a further blow in April when the European Council adopted a law targeting their ill-gotten gains. The directive calls on EU countries to ensure policing agencies are adequately resourced to trace, identify, freeze or confiscate criminal property. It also approves the seizure of unexplained wealth where a link to crime is shown and for frozen property to be sold under certain conditions.

Worldwide, criminality continues to grow at a staggering rate in response to intensifying political, social, economic and security challenges, according to the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index. In fact, nearly 80 per cent of the world’s population now live in countries with high levels of criminal activity. However, data shows that the international response has failed to meet the organised crime threat, the report points out.

The most powerful gangs are able to impact not only the rule or law but also the stability of governments, as seen in Haiti and Ecuador in recent months. Where corruption undermines governance, the very people who should be part of the solution to rising crime levels become instead part of the problem.

The absence of a unified international strategy to tackle the escalating crime contagion greatly alarms Jürgen Stock, secretary general of global policing agency Interpol. “What every police force knows, but the rest of the world has yet to realise, is that there has been an epidemic of transnational organised crime and at such a scale that it is now a global security crisis,” he said.

Stock added: “The first duty of a state is to keep its people safe. Without unity in addressing this threat, and addressing it now, it is going to be beyond the reach of the world’s law enforcement and security agencies.”