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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 12:09 pm
Time: 12:09 pm
Results for shadow economies
2 results foundAuthor: Sukharenko, Alexander Title: Russian Organized Crime and its Impact on Foreign Economies Summary: According to Russia’s National Security Strategy (2009), criminalization of the economy is one of the long-term threats to internal security. In 2011, Russia’s shadow economy was probably worth 19 trillion rubles ($632 billion), or 35 percent of gross domestic product. While rising in absolute terms, the figure has fallen from 77 percent of GDP in 1994 and tumbled to as low as 28 percent in 2009-2010. This size is 3.5 times larger than corresponding G-7 economies like the U.S., France, and Canada (GFI, 2013). The World Economic Forum reports on global competiveness show that the level of harm of business caused by Russian organized crime is one of the highest, not only in Europe, but also in the whole world. In 2012, Russia ranks 114th out of 144 countries on this indicator (WEF, 2012). The lack of laws, lax regulation, corruption, and extreme forms of violence have enabled criminal organizations to make substantial inroads into lucrative economic sectors, including energy, metallurgy, construction, banking and retail. The Ministry of Internal Affairs (2012) estimated that some 1,000 different companies are controlled by organized crime. Organized crimes’ success can be attributed in part to the fact that many members of the elite, who are influential in economics and politics, are directly involved in illicit activities. Corrupt officials provide criminal front companies with licenses and quotas, customs exemptions, budgetary funds, municipal and state property. Further, law enforcement officials often help eliminate their competitors, and provide criminal bosses with protection from the law. A significant portion of criminal proceeds are transferred and laundered through offshore banks and shell companies. According to Global Financial Integrity, Russia is the fifth largest exporter of illicit capital over the past decade, behind China, Mexico, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, respectively (GFI, 2012). The Russian economy lost at least $211.5 billion in illicit financial outflows from 1994 to 2011 (or about US$11.8 billion per annum). These outflows represent the proceeds of crime, corruption, and tax evasion, and have serious negative consequences for the national economy (GFI, 2013). Some of this money has returned to Russia at favorable exchange rates, where it has been reinvested in other illicit schemes or used to purchase real estate, companies, and banks. As a result of this cycle, many criminal bosses made up a significant proportion of the new wealthy class. Details: Stockholm: Institute for Security and Development Policy, 2013. 3p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Brief No. 114, 2013: Accessed May 22, 2013 at: http://www.isdp.eu/images/stories/isdp-main-pdf/2013-sukharenko-russian-organized-crime.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Russia URL: http://www.isdp.eu/images/stories/isdp-main-pdf/2013-sukharenko-russian-organized-crime.pdf Shelf Number: 128775 Keywords: Money LaunderingOrganized Crime (Russia)Political CorruptionShadow Economies |
Author: Banfield, Jessie Title: Crime and Conflict: The new challenge for peacebuilding Summary: This report is offered as a contribution to the growing effort to understand the nexus between organised crime, armed violence and fragility, and to design effective responses. At the heart of the document is the hypothesis that an application of the approaches and overall lens of peacebuilding can enrich broader efforts to reduce and transform contemporary armed violence and fragility linked to organised crime. This approach has not been widely tested in practice, but when it has the results are promising. Over the course of the 20th century, a major period of inter-state warfare and wars of decolonisation gave way to an era of predominantly civil conflicts. The last decade points to further shifts, with far fewer civil wars now recorded worldwide. In their wake, observers seem to agree that conflict is again changing, but a common narrative as to the dominant direction of these changes, and hence the contours of the global peace and security agenda, has yet to gel. However, one major factor correlated to current changing forms of armed violence is now known to be the effect of new patterns, as well as increased scope and scale, both of organised crime and shadow economies operating at national and sub-national levels. Overlapping and blurred categorisations of a raft of non-state armed groups are often strung together in attempts to describe the complexities involved. We can identify three broad dimensions to organised crime and its relationship to armed violence and fragility that can help us hone in on the key problems to be tackled. First, its connection to power holders and political interests poses challenges to governance and statebuilding approaches where the state itself is complicit. Second, attention to the incentives that pull and/or push individuals into crime helps us to identify broad-based response strategies. Third, globalized market structures in key crime commodities, such as illegal drugs, point to the need to look inwards as much as outwards in their response in countries where high demand sustains the financial flows and profits of organised crime. This paints a complex picture. Given this complexity, the degree of consensus on the limitations of current approaches to the problem is perhaps not surprising. For example: - There is widespread recognition that notions of sovereignty can protect state officials complicit in organised crime; - The emphasis on locking up criminals as a major component of the global response to the problem may actually exacerbate violence in some cases; - Little headway has been made in reducing the receptivity of fragile contexts to criminal enterprise; and - Peacebuilding interventions have yet to adequately frame the issue of organised crime within overall responses to conflict and violence. Organised crime has hitherto been treated primarily as a law and order problem. The shift away from an exclusive focus on law enforcement has begun, but it is very recent. Nevertheless, attention to the relationship between organised crime and state fragility is increasing in development policy agendas, and is the subject of a number of recent reports and seminars. This reflects growing recognition that levels of armed violence and associated fragility related to organised crime in different settings demand policy-makers and practitioners to work across the range of factors and policy arenas involved, such as law enforcement and crime prevention, security and diplomacy, development and peacebuilding, and public health. The peacebuilding sector has been slow to come to the table, no doubt influenced by funders' priorities and institutional silos that currently work against the types of joined-up responses that are needed. However, designing interventions that are broad-based and transformative in intent can help to underpin a new generation of responses. In particular: - Conflict analysis is crucial for understanding the dynamics at play. Rounded analysis through a peace and conflict lens, differentiating between root causes, proximate causes and triggers, will help to inform more holistic responses and ensure that projects 'do no harm' - avoiding the unintentional reinforcement of negative conflict dynamics; - Dialogue - often initiated, facilitated and sustained by third parties who are trusted for their impartiality and/or expertise - can bring together the actors involved in and affected by the problem in order to generate solutions; and - Civic activism and empowerment emphasise the importance of bringing a wider range of actors to the fore. The capacity to leverage lasting solutions is to be found beyond state institutions and within and across communities. This includes not only non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but also business leaders, women's organisations, religious institutions and academics. In its concluding section, this report offers five priority areas for action: 1. Conflict-sensitive approaches need to be brought to bear on law enforcement. Law enforcement will remain a key response mechanism to the nexus between organised crime, armed violence and fragility. However, it needs to adopt a 'do no harm' approach as advocated by the peacebuilding sector in relation to development assistance. 2. There is a need for improved analysis and information flow across the whole range of local, national and global dimensions of organised crime. While there has been a flurry of attention to the issues, enormous knowledge gaps remain. Greater analytical purchase across all dimensions will facilitate better monitoring of the impact of policy responses. 3. There needs to be a more innovative and creative way of dealing with predatory power holders. Current state-building approaches require a deeper understanding of the role of predatory power holders, including how criminal agendas can be factored into peace negotiations and processes. Details: London: International Alert, 2014. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 23, 2014 at: http://international-alert.org/sites/default/files/CVI_CrimeConflict_EN_2014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: International URL: http://international-alert.org/sites/default/files/CVI_CrimeConflict_EN_2014.pdf Shelf Number: 133394 Keywords: Armed ViolenceFinancial CrimesOrganized CrimeShadow EconomiesViolence and Conflict |