“While organised crime and corruption are not new phenomena, their spread, impact and forms in the modern world are unprecedented. The effects of organised crime and corruption are being felt in developing and developed nations alike”

Global Initiative Senior Adivsor Ugljlesa (Ugi) Zvekic (former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Serbia to the UN) wrote two articles featured in the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)’s publication on Research Conferences on Organised Crime at the Bundeskriminalamt in Germany (Vol III). Mr Zvekic focuses on the connections of organised crime and corruption, with development and with Southern Eastern Europe, respectively.

In his article Organised Crime and Corruption in the Context of Development the focus lies on the fragile states and states in situations of peacebuilding and state consolidation. Especially in these, the impact of these illicit phenomena on the areas of stability, governance, development and the rule of law cannot be understated. The article names four “development impact areas” as especially vulnerable to organised crime: health, marine environment, terrestrial environment, and peace and governance. He then moves on to review different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in terms of their “direct and indirect impacts on organised crime”.

In the second article, Mr Zvekic turns to Corruption and Organised Crime Threats in Southern Eastern Europe. The article traces corruption from a transnational to a local level, and shows that organised crime’s impact “comes to light in the form of shifts in major illicit markets, and expansion of new criminal markets as well as a blurring of taditional producer, comsumer and transit state typologies”. Adopting a regional perspective, the Western Balkans, the article highlights a political economy of organised corruption:

“less and less an individual act as there is a need for organisation, division of labour and for people who act, launder and in the end legalize the profits”.¨

Find the entire publication via the Bundeskriminalamt: Töttel, Ursula, Bulanova-Hristova, Gergana & Flach, Gerhard, Research Conferences on Organised Crime at the Bundeskriminalamt in Germany (Vol. III), Transnational Organised Crime 2013 – 2015, Band: 48, 2016 (257 pages).

Photo Credit: Vagelis Pikoulas (Flickr), Belgrade