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Round Table
Corruption without Boundaries: The Links between Corruption and Organized crime in the European Union, 16 November 2010
Presentation: Countering Corruption and Organized Crime, Tsvetlin Yovchev, Chairman of the National Security Agency
Today’s round table emphasizes the existing public consensus on the seriousness of the threats posed by organized crime as well as the importance of the already taken measures to counteract organized crime in all its forms, including corruption.
The reasons for the existence of these negative social phenomena are objective and subjective. The first ones are related to living conditions and the phase of social development. The subjective ones are connected with the psychological attitude and legal consciousness of the individual and society as a whole.
One of the main reasons organized crime networks to come into being and persist is the striving of people for fast profits through illegal activities. These networks function like corporations and success achieved in one sphere leads to widening their activities into parallel or other profitable sectors. This analogy with corporations arises because of how an illegal operation is planned, supported and carried out, pursuing financial gains in the end. In certain cases there is strict division of tasks assigned while observing specific relations between executing and ordering persons – direct subordination or network type of relations among autonomous structures.
Besides the direct threat posed by these illegal activities to society, the accumulation of financial assets, which in itself is a source of influence, is also viewed as a very serious threat to national security. This cross section shows a multifaceted link between corruption and organized crime. Assets accumulated from illegal activities enable the exertion of corruption pressure upon certain groups where widespread corruption is easily exploited by organized crime. At the same time corruption almost always goes hand in hand or creates prerequisites for other crimes and illegal activities. From national security’s point of view the main corruption threat is related to the creation of dependability which could intentionally be used to hurt the interests of the state and society.
Organized crime uses corruption as a separate tool or in combination with others (violence, threats and legal trade structures) to optimize the effectiveness and profits from illegal activities. Most often organized crime uses corruption to:
• Protect assets acquired from criminal activities
• Create favorable environment for committing other crimes
• Defend crime group leaders including measures aiming at circumventing or aborting investigations; legal prosecution or incrimination
• Counteract the efforts of law-enforcement bodies
• Create positive image of certain members belonging to crime networks (the image of a respected society member)
From national security’s point of view the efforts of organized crime to gain political power through creating dependability, lobbies or infiltrating trusted people into government bodies are considered as very dangerous.
In the context of the above stated the main objective in crushing the activity of organized crime networks, including corruption practices exploited by them, is to make the environment for generating profits less favorable and riskier. The counteraction methods used by law-enforcement bodies are tracing, recording and cutting off of financial flows, along with disrupting illegal assets distribution and legalization. In this way the financial ground of criminal networks is being eroded and their ability to operate and defend diminished. Another important counteraction measure is making the environment unfavorable for organized crime through cutting off delivery channels, limiting crime markets, conducting networks vulnerability analysis and legal prosecution of wrong-doers.
Up to the moment worldwide no conventional way has been discovered to handle such negative social phenomena but efforts are targeted at eliminating their obvious manifestation and reducing them to socially acceptable levels. For this purpose bodies were set up, interagency relations were enhanced and measures were taken to improve the legal framework and the effectiveness of the judiciary, better define the functions and responsibilities of competent institutions, and conduct risk analysis and awareness raising events . A very important objective is to make the information component of the counteraction and prevention system stronger which is crucial in the timely detection of problems, their analysis and corrective measures, including information support of criminal prosecution.
In counteracting organized crime and corruption civil society plays an important role not only in providing feedback to competent institutions but also in giving expertise related to issues that impact national security. In this connection the presented today analysis gives a different prospective on the subject matter. The proposed by CSD implementation of a set of indicators combating corruption within the EU as well as applying the identified best anti-corruption practices should be highly praised.
In conclusion I would like to underline how important the role of non-governmental organizations is in forming the perception that national security is a common cause and the individual citizen and each organization are not only consumers but generators of security. At the same time I would like to assure you that the opening up to the public of the National Security Agency will continue in the future as effective counteraction to conventional and new threats requires the mobilization of all resources at all levels of society.
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