Josephine Bush

Paolo Perri
Organized Crime
Due: January 2017

Human Trafficking: Lucrative Business for Organized Crime Operations

Introduction

Organized crime, a business that is said to be 1.5% of the total global GDP, has become

an aspect of our society that is often overlooked because crime groups are so interwoven in so

many different aspects. The roots of organized crime groups date back centuries, however, their

influence and economic control continues to play a significant role in the global economy today.

Organized crime groups were once affiliated with narrow lines of fiscal profit, but they have

tapped into everything, most recently human trafficking for means of financial growth. For many

mafia groups human trafficking is not their primary source of business but it does drive a steady

flow of cash. With a global crises of refugees, peoples being displaced due to internal conflict

and economic instability, business opportunities have opened for mafia groups in transferring

groups of desperate people to lands of opportunities. Human trafficking, in terms of

prostitution, smuggling, and transnational refugee transfers have opened up yet another outlet for

the growth of organized crime in the modern era.

Historical Background

Organized crime, otherwise known as the mafia in many parts of the world, has a history

that has lead to it being largely entangled in modern society as we know it. The way organized
crime runs is often in a grey area because many of them operate under or with legal business

fronts or have representatives in the government. It has the power to delegitimize real economies

and has a direct influence in political and social corruption. There are many branches of mafia

from the most known ones in Italy, but also the Russian mafia and other operations who engage

in illegal activities ranging from drug trade to offshore dumping. According to the Federal

Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the impact of transnational organized crime isnt easily

measured, but we know its significant. Organized crime rings manipulate and monopolize

financial markets, traditional institutions like labor unions, and legitimate industries like

construction and trash hauling (FBI, 2016). Further, organized crime has proven to cause a

significant raise in internal city corruption, murders and violence, and cheat the system out of

millions through stock frauds and scamming techniques. It is said that as a collective system,

organized crime is a $1 trillion system annually. Each continent has their own primary group/

groups who are operating, however, each set of those have an extensive network of international

relations, and also often they operate with each other creating partnerships. Security Intelligence,

an analysis platform, in an article, Why Organized Crime and Terror Groups Are Converging,

by Steven DAlfonso, found that transnational organized crime is so interlinked they have been

able to create support systems and networks on a global level.

For example, there is evidence of Hezbollah establishing a strong base in Latin America over
the past decade or more and working with Mexican DTOs to launder money, finance terrorism
and smuggle people. According to Jennifer Hesterman, author of The Terrorist-Criminal
Nexus, the Italian Mafia has worked with al-Qaida, and DTOs with U.S. outlaw motorcycle
gangs, to carry out illicit operations. These are groups with diverging interests, goals and
philosophies, yet they are working together to capitalize on each others specific skills or
assets (DAlfonso, Security Intelligence, 2014).
 Nearly all groups to some degree are involved in human trafficking because they can

either sell the people as prostitutes or slaves, hold migrants for ransom, and request large sums

for the transfer of desperate people between lands. In the modern era mobilization has become

easier due to technological advancements, the unification of the EU and the end of the Cold War.

From the open borders between EU states to the rise of social media, transnational organized

crime influence have risen and their deeply rooted societal connections continue to grow.

Human Trafficking and Organized Crime

In the context of human trafficking it is said according to Gijsbert Van Liemt, in his

article, Human Trafficking in Europe: An Economic Perspective notes the Japanese Yakuza, the

Russian, the Chechen, the Italian or the Albanian Mafia, or the Chinese Triads are involved in

human trafficking, because they already have well established routes and the trained personnel

to support human trafficking (Van Liemt, p. 24, 2004). The powerful establishment of organized

crime has been as successful as it is because it almost always has connections within

governmental authorities. It is very valuable to organized crime groups to have their people in

the government making their movements of goods and people easier and securing that their

products get delivered. For example, Van Liemt claims that because of internal cooperation the

movement of people is easier. The victims of human trafficking often cannot go to the police

because the police are also members of mafia groups or higher up officials have been influenced

by key members of the mafia.

Regarding the cost of smuggling between borders and transnationally, the costs vary

drastically. For instance, it can be $17 to cross the Morocco/Algeria border, a hard border to
navigate, and up to $50,000 to get from China to America (Van Liemt, p.25, 2004). These prices

have risen over the years, but are largely unknown. If you are an individual seeking to be

smuggled you may incur further debts along your journey or fall victim to organized crime

groups, the most prevalent example being women who are forced into prostitution.

In order to combat border crossing governments have continuously put more and more

money into border controls. This movement has not decreased immigration and smuggling but

instead immigrants are taking more dangerous routes. For instance, with the Syrian refugee crisis

beginning in 2014 where many migrants opted to take sea routes across the Mediterranean.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR), in the first

six months of 2015 more than 137,000 refugees took boats through extremely harsh conditions to

reach Europe. The UNHCR reports that 67,500 people arrived in Italy and 68,000 in Greece via

sea routes in 2015. However, many lives have been lost and the Mediterranean has turned into

a graveyard for many who were trying to obtain a better life in Europe. For instance, in April of

2015 the biggest refugee shipwreck on record accorded over 800 people drowning.

Unfortunately, the displacement of people within the Middle East and across Africa has opened

up lines of business for smugglers.

In Libya many fishing boats have been turned into human transfer boats, packing 200

people onto small boats and sending them North. A Guardian article, Libya's people smugglers:

inside the trade that sells refugees hopes of a better life, reports that smuggling people using

fishing boats from Zuwara, a port in Libya, to Europe has become a fruitful business. The

extreme rate of smuggling has caused single handedly for the cost of fish to go up in the region

based on how many boats have been taken off fishers hands and turned into smuggling boats.
The Guardian article by Patrick Kingsley, interviews a man, Hajj, who is in charge of much of

the smuggling operations in Zuwara. Hajj is reported saying he is basically not worried, he says,

Im not threatened, says Hajj, a 33-year-old law graduate, its been happening for years,

these promises and threats. Theyll move on. What are they going to do, put two frigates here?

Two warships? In Libyan waters? Thats an invasion (Kingsley, The Guardian, 2015).

According to Hajj, ten years ago he was part of risky business, but nowadays it has

become an open market, that anyone who can buy a boat can enter. Migrants also can take the

journey through the dessert. For migrants and refugees the risk is worth taking when a better,

more stable life is a possibility. However, the journey is long and there are risks at every corner.

For example, smugglers often use kidnapping for ransom to further profits. With anything, if you

have the money you are ensured a better and safer journey north. Today, with a saturated

market costs for travel have gone down, but smugglers in return are packing more people into

boats to make up for costs. In the case of smuggling people from Libya to the north most people

head toward the islands of Italy, such as Lampedusa (Kingsley, The Guardian, 2015). While Hajj

noted smuggling has become an open market because of the increased demand it must also be

noted that organized crime groups have also picked up on this trend and forged international

bonds between crime groups in developing nations and those in the destination countries.

Human trafficking, especially in dire situations, more often than not occurs on an illegal

level through platforms of organized crime. On a global scale we have seen an overall similar

pattern from south to north and also from east to west. In the context of Europe today we see the

flow from east and south to the north and then in the Americas we see the consistent flow from

south to north across the Mexican border.

 Migration to Europe has long been occurring because it has always offered the possibility

for a better life. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in 2011 did a case study, The

role of organized crime in the smuggling of migrants from West Africa to the European Union.

According to the study irregular immigrants use smugglers as rates as high as 99 percent of the

time, maybe not for the entire journey but for various segments of it. There are several options of

how to pay the fee to Europe. Some people have the possibility to pay all at once to a group, but

especially women with the cost of the fee must also have sex with these traffickers. Most other

migrants use several different smugglers in order to reach their destination. If you have the

ability to pay upfront you often also pay for forged documents. There are many levels of

organization and ties with many networks in various communities that make a migration

successful (UNHCR, pg. 13, 2011). For instance, Libya, has several very corrupt organized

crime groups and they have been a key player in irregular migrational movements, in regard to

the Agadez-Libyan Arab Jamahiriya route, many were veterans of Colonel Al-Qadhafis Islamic

Legion, who not only know the terrain intimately, but have invaluable contacts with Libyan

officials (UNCHR, pg. 49, 2011).

Across Africa there are two options, people who are inexperienced and offer cheaper

delivery options to the North and to the coast and then the ones who have created their own sort

of North and West African mafias and have a sort of professional establishment. The

professional establishment comes with a heftier cost but does offer a more streamlined

migration process.

...guides such as these, routinely equipped with satellite phones, are figures of considerable
influence. At the requisite moment, a guide will take a group of migrants from their lodging to
the vehicle arranging their transport (if they are to be driven across a border, rather than passing
on foot) and they are then taken across the frontier, often by an unofficial path or in such a
 manner as to avoid detection. These groups of organized crime control areas larger than the EU
itself. On all levels there are some national authorities who accept bribes and have allowed the
process of irregular migration to continue. Corrupt national figures are merely part of the
equation that has allowed for the human trafficking sector of organized crime to flourish for
years (UNCHR, pg. 50, 2011).

Often times many migrants seeking to leave their country fall victim to crime groups who

promise them fake visas and documents. Organized crime is so well developed that illegal

activities can go on for years without being noticed. Recently, author Katie Mettler of The

Washington Post reported Mobsters ran a fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana for 10 years, flying the

flag and issuing visas for $6,000. For over ten years a group of mobsters who spoke Dutch and

English had legal looking forged documents and they helped people get American visas. Their

offices were only open several days a week and they often targeted audiences in other

neighboring countries in order to not be caught in Ghana. Further, the visa documents looked

very real and also they used tactics such as bribing officials to look the other way in order to

continue their illegal business. Clearly, their fake embassy worked because it could recruit

vulnerable people and had corrupt government officials supporting them. The consular offices

were set up and run by both a Ghanaian and Turkish crime groups. This report came out in early

November of 2016 and clearly outlines how this is a modern day common occurrence that many

crime groups are cashing in on (Mettler, The Washington Post, 2016).

Often human smuggling is not tied to single groups, like the Russian or Albanian mafia,

instead many players along the way, who work and enable organized crime, profit on behalf of a

migrant.
 Organized Crime and Prostitution

Known mafia groups have used human trafficking to further their own economic situation

once they are in the lands of operation. For instance mafias have forced women into prostitution,

house labor, or crime groups and leaders will hold migrants hostage for ransom. Exploitation of

those who have been trafficked often times does not begin until they have reached the destination

country. Many migrants believe they have paid all their fees but it is in developed countries

where their situation actually gets much worse than their situations were in their home countries.

In some cases women have left their countries because they have seen advertisements and

recruitment jobs for young dancers in Western countries and upon arrival have been forced into

prostitution. The aftermath of the Cold War lead to a desperate economic situation in the Eastern

block countries and the Albanian mafia has used it to their economic growth. According to a

2002, Guardian article, Once they were girls. Now they are slaves, prostitution in London is

worth upwards of 40 million pounds a year, because over 80,000 men were paying for sex every

week in 2002. The mafia works with methods of extreme fear, such as harming their families

back home and therefore the women do not speak out. The Albanian mafia is just one example of

organized crime groups using young women dreams to go to lands of hope and exploiting them.

Similarly, the Russian mafia, since the fall of the Soviet Union has come to power,

asserting their own form of authoritarianism, according to Sally Stoecker in her article, The

Rise in Human Trafficking and the Role of Organized Crime. They have strategically used the

poor living conditions and high rates of unemployment to recruit girls and women into places of

work that end up being prostitution, sweatshop labor, and domestic servitude. The Russian

mafia is largely integrated in all aspects of society and is present in nearly all political
institutions. Further, human trafficking has become a lucrative sect of mafia business because it

is low risk and high in payoffs. In the context of sex trafficking, organized crime groups know

they will be receiving funds from their workers on a daily basis. The year that Stoecker wrote

her article Slavic girls were of the highest demand. The Western market demand fueled Russian

mobsters to deliver a wanted product (Stoecker, pg. 130, 2000).

According to Van Liemts article, Human Trafficking in Europe: An Economic

Perspective, there are three groups of women who go into or are forced into prostitution and are

smuggled to the West through organized crime groups.

Europol distinguishes three types of situations. The most numerous group are the
women who have previously worked in the sex industry in their home country. They know that
they will work as prostitutes, and indeed often approach the traffickers to arrange the travel. Only
on arrival in the West when their exploitation begins, do they realise they have been duped into
working under slave-like conditions with little chance to keep the money they earn. The second
biggest group are the deceived women who are recruited to work in the West in the service or
entertainment industries, i.e. there is no mention whatsoever of having to provide sexual
services. Often the recruitment is done through seemingly legitimate employment agencies. The
final, and smallest, group are the women who are kidnapped. They were unwilling victims from
the start. They may have already been working in the sex industry in the home country but they
had no intention of going abroad. These victims are often sold amongst networks or individual
pimps- sex slaves in the truest sense of the word (Europol, 2001, pp.19- 20) (Van Liemt, pg. 21,
2004).

Prostitution has offered a market for years in almost every organized crime group because

it is a steady flow of cash and something they can coerce and manage daily. It has become deeply

integrated in mafia culture because women become dependent on the mafia and are completely

tied to them. Further, many women are given drugs and easily become hooked causing further

dependence to the mafia and their drug trafficking and dealing businesses. According to the UN

up to 27 million people are held as slaves in 2007, the largest percentage being modern day sex

slaves. However, while prostitution and getting exotic girls to the market place in the West has
had huge profits for organized crime groups the mafia is willing to enter any line of business for

more money.

Organized Crime and Kidnappings

On top of prostitution organized crime networks have used kidnapping as a technique to

attain funds. Mafia groups have had an extensive history of holding peoples ransom and asking

families for money. This history is especially relevant in Italy where from the mid 1960s until the

late 1990s nearly 700 people were held ransom in order to make money from upper and middle

class families whom could pay to get their loved ones back. According to an article by

Alessandra Montalbano featured in Cambridge Core, Ransom kidnapping: the anonymous

underworld of the Italian Republic, both the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian Ndrangheta

created full-fledged industries based on their kidnappings. They would hold their hostages in

caves, small houses and give them little to nothing to live for months and even years until they

would receive the money they wanted from the family. It was not uncommon for mafia members

to send body parts, such as an ear, to the family via mail to show the critical condition their child,

wife or husband were in. According to Montalbano the kidnapping industry not only lead to huge

profits from well-off families but also lead to territorial control.

Today, mafias no longer have been targeting privileged families but in some cases have

been holding refugees on the southern coasts hostage. A DW news article, Italian police bust

Somali mafia ring trafficking asylum seekers, states that they have found mafia members who

have held refugee seekers hostage and were asking for money from relatives in order to let them

go to northern Europe. The example that is used in the news article is an organized crime group

from Somali who is holding individuals in apartments in Catania until they are paid. Once they
are paid more they will let the people continue their journey. Clearly, organized crime groups

have learned from historic cases of mafia groups and implementing these practices in the modern

era.

According to an Independent article, Revealed: Mafias prime role in human-trafficking

misery, by Michael Day, the mafia in Italy does work with some Egyptians in the process of

human trafficking from Africa to Europe. Upon arrival the Italian Mafia has held people in

horrendous conditions and demand more money from their families. In this context those who

survived eight days of being held hostage with no food and water said that they had to pay half

their fee to a well-known Egyptian family in the beginning and then were to pay the second half

to a Western Union account in Milan. If anyone is unable to pay the cost they can be detained

indefinitely. An expert, Corrado de Rosa, was quoted in this article saying, if there are illegal

activities in their territory, theyll know about and theyll regulate and profit from them (Day,

Independent, 2013).

Similarly with Eastern European route also has many kidnappers. The Spectator article,

Ali Baba and the 300 hostages, by Ramita Navai, reports that hundreds of refugees have been

sent to the small town of Vaksince in Macedonia and are being held for ransom. This specific

example has been collecting hundreds of thousands of euros a month. It is headed by an Afghan

by the name of Ali Baba and in most cases refugees his men kidnap from other small smuggling

groups and bring them to Vaksince. Upon arrival, in a house with no food and harsh conditions,

the migrants are forced to pay large sums of money and if they are unable to they must request

the money from their family. Ali Baba is said to have ties with the Albanian mafia and will kill

anyone who does not pay the sum. Officials have cleared the small house in Vaksince, however
the mafia has an extremely organized and large network of people and has other houses

elsewhere. According to Navai, migration to the north is inevitable and if ...Europe wants to

help refugees, it must concentrate on fighting these criminal gangs. Attempts to stem the flow of

migrants are not working even the 110-mile fence that Hungary is now building along its

border with Serbia will not keep them out (Navai, Spectator, 2015).

In each decade we have seen huge rises of smuggling because of internal displacement or

poor economies within various countries. Organized crime groups time and time again have been

compelled to further their economic gains because they know how desperate people are. For

instance, in 1988, in the US, a Taiwanese crime syndicate became involved in human trafficking

when cash-rich, recently legalised Fuzhounese Americans were willing to pay almost any

amount to get their relatives out of China before the 1988 offer of regularisation expired, (Van

Liemt, pg. 18, 2004 ). Later in the 1990s the Japanese organized crime group, Yakuza became

involved with human smuggling and trafficking as their traditional methods of business had

fallen due to the bubble economy (Van Liemt, pg. 18, 2004).

The U.S. southern border between Mexico has been one instance where organized crime

groups have taken over the traditional methods of smuggling individuals into the United States.

According to InSight Crime, Mexico is home to the hemispheres largest, most sophisticated and

violent organized crime groups. The drug cartels of Mexico have also branched into human

trafficking because they can use similar routes and have an additional source of income. On top

of organized crime groups trafficking people there have been reports of policemen getting

involved in extortion. One article on the Insight Crimes website, 21 Mexico Police Arrested
for Kidnapping, Extortion of Migrants, by Tristan Clavel, reported that police in the area were

holding young migrants and requesting funds in order for migrants to be released.

Conclusion

Although many people try to find ways to exploit migrants organized crime groups are

the most profitable because they have a system. Van Liemt reports because there has been an

increase in demand of human smuggling organized crime groups have become increasingly

involved. Large networks of well organized crime groups have the ability to push small

smugglers out of business because they can offer better technology and while still very corrupt

they can operate on a larger scale.

Governments along with agencies such as the United Nations are the leaders when it

comes to fighting organized crime groups. They have made some progress, however because

crime groups have such large networks and rely so heavily on corrupt governmental officials the

problem further infiltrates various legal systems.

With human trafficking in the hands of elite organized crime groups it drives prices up

and could also be potentially more dangerous for migrants if one of the groups were to be shut

down by a national government. Poorer migrants may still opt for non-affiliated smugglers to

take them across borders because of lower costs, even if they do not have traditional safe houses

and technology. Mafia groups exploit people, places and things everyday in order to gain a profit.

The people they are trafficking are merely another means to add to their income in an obscure

manner. Whether it be prostitution, slavery, or smuggling, the people who have been victimized
through the process are products of the commodification of man. A phenomenon we often link to

the transatlantic slave trade, but it is happening now at even more pervasive rates.
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