The Merger: How Organized Crime is taking over Canada and the World - Softcover

Robinson, Jeffrey

3.79

58 ratings by Goodreads

9780771075674: The Merger: How Organized Crime is taking over Canada and the World

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771075677 ISBN 13: 9780771075674

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2000

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In the spring of 1990 some twenty men of different nationalities met for the first time in a massive hotel and leisure complex called The City Club on the outskirts of Vienna. The purpose of their meeting? They told hotel management that they were members of an organization called "The Italian Association" and that the subject of their meeting was how European countries could help South American countries develop their economies in Europe.... International crime has been the top headline grabber in recent months, and this is the only book that tells the inside story that until now only top CIA, Interpol, and other global crime fighters knew. In The Merger international crime expert and author of The Laundrymen Jeffrey Robinson uncovers the intricate network of connections between such infamous organized crime rings as the Sicilian Mafiosi, the Camorra from Naples, the Ndrangheta from Calabria, the Chinese Triads, the Russian, Hungarian, and Czech Republic "maffiyas," and organized crime groups from Columbia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Vietnam--just to name a few. In this meticulously researched book, Robinson pinpoints the factors that led to these global crime cartels--digital communication, world markets, the internet--and reveals how they have changed the face of crime forever. Praise for The Laundrymen: "A textbook on the transformation of ill-gotten gains, usually in cash, into seemingly legal currency. . .Although the situation is portrayed as nearly hopeless, the reader is saved from despair by Robinson's wry, witty writing and the fast-paced quality of his story."--USA Today

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Review:

When telecommunications companies merge, the news is immediately analyzed by the media and government agencies. Owners of the companies' stock immediately vote on the wisdom of the move by buying or selling. But when criminal organizations merge and make their operations global, it takes years for law enforcement to figure out what happened, who was involved, and what the implications are. Ever since Italian-American mobster Lucky Luciano linked Mafia families in Sicily and the U.S., crime cartels have been finding ways to expand their operations across national borders, making those countries' policemen play an extended game of catch-up. Jeffrey Robinson is an authority on international crime, especially money laundering, and his book The Merger sometimes reads like a crime novel. It seems strange to imagine that Mexican drug traffickers would be working closely with Thai postal workers; that a billion dollars a month in drug money would be laundered from Russian gangs through Greek Cypriots and then moved on to respectable financial centers such as London and New York; that Colombian drug cartels would get kerosene--an important ingredient for making cocaine--from Turkmenistan by way of Argentina; that Eastern European criminals would claim to be Jewish so they could get Israeli passports and launder money in the Holy Land. And that's just for-profit criminality--politically and religiously motivated crime has long been international and is rapidly branching out into cyberterrorism.

Robinson concludes with a note that international drug trafficking is growing so fast it now represents 2 percent of the world's economy. However, while criminal organizations think globally, Robinson writes, most law enforcement is set up to act locally. Nations can't decide how to deal with the problem because none wants to be the first to sacrifice national sovereignty for the greater purpose of slowing crime. If this book doesn't keep you up at night, or at least raise some serious goose flesh, you're made of pretty stern stuff. --Lou Schuler

About the Author:

Jeffrey Robinson is the international bestselling author of eighteen books, including the acknowledged leading work on the subject of money laundering, The Laundrymen. An expert on international crime, he has been a keynote speaker on the subject for the United Nations, Interpol, U.S. Customs, the FBI, and many other organizations.

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