CRIME CARTELS THREATEN WORLD, U.N. TOLD

Money Laundering A $870 Billion-A-Year International Business

VIENNA - Kevin Ford, a former New York city deputy police
commissioner, thought he knew everything there was to know about
corrupt cops.

He had struggled through some of New York's most embarrassing police
corruption scandals before leaving in 1998 to work as an international
investigator for a London-based firm.

That's when he discovered the real world.

"In some eastern European countries, criminal groups actually control
the police," he said. "In Nigeria, if you need help from law
enforcement, you better be prepared to send a taxi."

At the beginning of the 21st century, an honest, well-paid police
force is still a luxury in many parts of the world. That could mean
trouble for the rest of us.

"In a global economy, we're as vulnerable as the weakest link," warns
Giuliano Zaccardelli, the RCMP's deputy commissioner for organized
crime.

"Once criminals find an easy place to set up shop, they can use it as
a base to penetrate other countries."

Can the deepening holes in international law and order ever be
plugged?

Zaccardelli, Ford and crime experts from more than 120 nations came to
Vienna last week to find out. They were among the 1,500 delegates who
discussed a proposed landmark United Nations treaty against
transnational crime, which will be presented to the General Assembly
this year.

But even in the protective embrace of one of Europe's safest cities,
the delegates discovered they were up against formidable odds.

Transnational crime, which accounts for an estimated $870 billion a
year in money-laundering activities alone, is the globe's
fastest-growing industry. With a network that parallels the legitimate
operations of multinational firms, Sicilian Mafia dons, Russian
godfathers, Colombian drug barons and a half-dozen other major crime
cartels now pose a serious challenge to international economic and
political stability.

Staggering profits from narcotics and other illicit activities have
been used to undermine police and politicians from Bolivia to Ukraine
and Nigeria. In many countries, government has become little more than
a branch operation for sophisticated criminal rings.

"The changing structure of trade, finance, communications and
information has helped to foster an environment in which criminality
is not confined to national borders," said one of the papers prepared
for the 10th U.N. Congress on Prevention of Crime.

According to the paper, this is not your father's Mafia. "Criminal
organizations have adapted corporate-like structures . . . employing
highly skilled persons and mechanisms to generate and conceal profits
(and) are able to adapt themselves to changes in the market by
responding to public demand for goods and services."

But while nearly everyone at the crime prevention congress could agree
on the gravity of the threat, finding a way for nations to battle it
together was a different matter.

The proposed U.N. treaty is an ambitious attempt to "internationalize"
the fight against organized crime.

It would commit every country to enact similar penalties against
certain illicit activities, such as money-laundering, and enable
prosecutors and police to pursue their investigations in several
countries at once.

One key provision would lift bank secrecy in specific criminal cases
to allow investigators to follow the money trail wherever it leads.

The U.N. is also preparing three separate protocols to accompany the
treaty which would prohibit the export of women and children across
borders for sex or forced labour, the clandestine trade in weapons,
and the illicit smuggling of migrants.

Another treaty against corruption is being prepared for next year,
allowing prosecutors to go after politicians and officials who flee
their countries to enjoy their ill-gotten gains abroad.

"The time has come for criminal justice authorities throughout the
world to get their act together," Pino Arlacchi, a former
Mafia-fighter from Italy who heads the U.N.'s new drug control and
crime bureau in Vienna, said in his address to the congress.

"There are plenty of other bodies that deal with the global economy or
with issues of war and peace, but we need a way to make sure that
crime cannot hide behind international borders in safe havens."

Multinational crime-busting isn't new. Police agencies such as
Interpol and the recently formed Europol already swap certain
information on cases and assist in joint investigations.

But many of the U.N. crime proposals challenge governments to remove
legal barriers and change their domestic jurisprudence in a way that
directly impinges on sovereignty.

One idea, for instance, involves the creation of "super-prosecutors"
empowered to work on certain crimes across borders. But how much
information can countries tell each other about criminal suspects or
activities without endangering the privacy of their own citizens?

The thinking behind the new crime treaty belongs to the same mindset
that created the concept of "humanitarian intervention" inside the
borders of countries suspected of crimes against humanity.

The concept was used for the first time last year during NATO's war in
Kosovo - and it's likely to be just as controversial when applied to
international felons.

"It takes courage," admitted Justice Minister Anne McLellan, who led
the large Canadian contingent to Vienna.

"Any measures we adopt will have to involve a rethinking of our basic
notions of sovereignty, human rights and privacy," she told delegates
during a special workshop on cybercrime.

In an interview, McLellan said that even crossing domestic juridical
barriers between federal and provincial governments would be an uphill
fight.

"But I think there's an emerging acknowledgment that we need to reach
a much higher level of integration than in the past."

Disputes between the U.S. and Canada over immigration and extradition
show how hard it is to reach a common approach to crime.

Shadowing the conference was the question of whether the solution
could prove worse than the problem.

"We certainly don't want to live as if we were in George Orwell's
novel, 1984," said Dennis Fernando Mizne of Brazil. "We do not want
telescreens, telephone taps and cameras monitoring us, and we don't
want our privacy invaded by authorities."