Key issues in fighting organised crime in the Balkans

Abstract

Traditional definitions of organised crime tend to focus on its links with the market. They depict organised crime as an alternative industry based on the stable supply of a criminal market, characterised by the use of force or threat by it, and motivated by illicit profit or a quest of political power. These definitions arise from the historically most common depictions of specific activities of organised crime, which in most parts of Europe and North America have traditionally been associated with the illegal collection of debts, extortion rackets, contract murders or systemic corruption leading to, and associated with, a transnational trade in drugs. Through the evolution of the definitions, these stereotypes have gradually waned away, and the use of violence, as well as the primary motivation by material profit, has been omitted from the lists of obligatory characteristics that a crime must fulfill in order to be classified as ?organised crime?. More recently, in the European Union definition, the use of violence and motivation by profit alone have been made only conditional criteria, and the quest of institutional power has been recognised as a motivating factor for organised crime equal to that of generating illicit profit. These new definitional approaches have opened the way to revolutionary ways of understanding the development of organised crime, specifically to including white-collar crime and massive fraud in the future definitions of organised crime, as well as further elaborating the aspect of political violence that is present in many organised crime activities across the world. In the Balkans, these new moments in defining organised crime appear to have been tested particularly directly in Serbia, where, first, there has been a long public debate over a systematic ?siphoning away? of public funds to the accounts of private companies through the mass corruption of a former, post-communist government until 2001. Subsequently, organised criminal rings have been accused of having masterminded and executed the assassination of the late Serbian Prime Minister, Dr Zoran Djindjic. The Balkans, and particularly Serbia, have been exposed to some of the most destructive consequences of organised crime. Correspondingly, the region can serve as a polygon or testing grounds for the exploration of the conceptual issues associated with organised crime. Finally, the experiences in crime control gained in this process could be valuable tools to address organised crime elsewhere. This especially concerns the emergence of what has recently become known in criminological discourse as the ?New War-Making Criminal Entity?. This paper explores the key features of organised crime against the background of the Serbian, and, by extension, Balkan circumstances, and draws conclusions as to how these experiences can be useful more globally.