BIG-TIME CRIME

Smugglers And Scamsters Flourish In The Global Village

In the good old days there apparently was only the Mafia to fear;
today there is a motley multitude of multi-ethnic mobs operating
around the globe. International travel and the failure of national
police agencies to keep pace with the law-and-order implications of
the global village have opened the door for criminals to expand their
operations significantly and frustrate jurisdiction-bound police.
Needless to say, no matter what their origin, the bad guys jumped at
the opportunity.

McMafia, the latest book by British Balkans expert Misha Glenny,
illustrates this phenomenon with a collection of gangster stories
culled from around the globe: the Russian Mob, Dubrovnik cigarette
barons, Bombay bandits, B.C. Bud producers, Sao Paulo gangs, Nigerian
Internet scamsters, Chinese snakeheads -- everyone makes a cameo appearance.

Glenny believes we have witnessed the ascendancy of multi-national
crime rings, and this is obvious if you look at the rise in people
trafficking, identity theft, drug trafficking, smuggling and
international fraud. Like McDonald's and modern corporations,
organized crime has gone global in the digital age.

A former journalist who specialized in Eastern and Southeastern
Europe (covering especially the fall of Yugoslavia), Glenny is now a
political consultant. His theory is that the underground economy
mirrors the legal marketplace and that globalization has transformed
subterranean commerce in the same way it has altered legitimate business.

Drugs, weapons, women and migrant labour are all international
commodities. As a result, those who traffic in them have become much
more than local scourges.

Glenny is not offering solutions; he's merely calling attention to
the situation and the problems it poses. And his book is a
fascinating, highly readable take on the world's crime syndicates. It
provides sanguinary snapshots of each hemisphere's fraudsters,
smugglers, thieves, pimps, extortionists, assassins and illicit chemists.

Still, Glenny has a magazine-feature writer's view of the world. He
grabs quick, fast-paced snapshots of various nations and regions and
draws sweeping conclusions from them. These aren't always accurate,
or insightful.

For instance, according to Glenny, Western Canada is home to the
largest per-capita concentration of crime conglomerates in the world.
In his opinion, we have become one of the biggest law-enforcement
headaches anywhere because "organized crime has broken out of the
ghetto of marginal communities and conquered the middle class."

His reason: A lot of people are growing pot in their basements. Hmmm.

Although he uses my book, Bud Inc., as a source, I'd say he's pushing
the envelope. Moreover, the portrait of the marijuana world he
presents is a few years out of date and doesn't reflect recent
changes that have occurred. Risks of crossing the border have
increased dramatically since 9/11; also, American judges are being
more lenient on growers, and domestic production has increased
accordingly. The result has been a decline in the amount of pot being
imported from Canada and, thus, a decline in B.C. production.

His chapters about Indian organized crime and its links to the Middle
East, as well as the sections on Israel, seem similarly distorted.
But that's what happens when you paint with broad brushstrokes.

For him, for example, Dubai is a "huge, undemocratic money-laundering
centre." Maybe. I suspect, though, that that's more of Glenny's Fleet
Street-inspired rhetoric -- which rings throughout.

Former Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin's "kamikaze cabinet" apparently
"flew their planes into the engine room of the Soviet social
contract." Poor guys. I personally would have blocked that metaphor,
and others.

Glenny has a good point to make with his narrative, but in parts he
seems overextended and outside his comfort zone. It shows mostly when
he strays too far from home. Outside of the chapters that are focused
on Europe or the former Communist regimes, some of the book reads
like a once-over, rip-and-write effort by a talented wordsmith.

Glenny provides a good, entertaining take on international crime
lords, but McMafia is short on real substance, which makes it McInfo
- -- non-fiction fast food for the chattering classes.