International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 92
Criminal Networks: The Forgotten Actors of International Politics
drug-trafficking revenue, $352 billion overall, is laundered annually in American
and European banking circuits through various financial operations (Syal 2009).
In a Chinese boxes system, the drug money is transformed into electronic titles,
using several currencies (notably virtual ones such as Bitcoins), passed from one
country to another through offshore companies and untraceably reinjected in the
financial systems through interbank loans (Gayraud 2014).
Several cases revealed by whistle-blowers reinforced the growing influence
of Mafias in the Banking system, notably in the United States and the UK recently
described by Saviano as “criminal capitalism capitals” (Saviano 2014). In 2016,
HSBC notably agreed to pay $1.9 billion in fines to the U.S. government for financial
irregularities in dealing with money that had come from Mexican cartels
(Gayraud 2014). In 2010, the U.S. administration condemned Wachovia Bank to
pay a paltry $160 million fine for failing to properly control the transfer of a staggering
$378.4 billion from Mexican casas de cambio (United Kingdom Parliament
2013). Using local bureaux de change the Sinaloa Cartel sent millions of dollars in
cash and opened hundreds of bank accounts in the Miami branch of the Wachovia
bank (Saviano 2014). As Walter Howie’s Red Capitalism highlights the penetration
of criminal money and criminal behavior in the Chinese state-owned banking
system is as worrying as the situation in the UK or in the United States (Howie
2011). Other tax havens such as the Bahamas or Switzerland have also been largely
targeted by Mafias, a 2008 investigation by Italian research institute Eurispes
showed that €44 billion of Ndrangheta assets were looted in Zurich banks (Reski
2013). Finally, as already mentioned, Mafias own banks, sometimes entire banking
systems in poorer countries, such as Nigeria, Cyprus, or the Bahamas.
Mafias successfully became major actors of the banking and financial system
in the least and most developed regions of the world, developing a potentially
lethal political weapon as overreliance of modern Nation-States and corporations
on this financing source critically exposes them.
4.2. Causal Factors of Mafias’ Expansion
To fully apprehend Mafias’ thriving financial and economic, and consequently
governmental, power, it is necessary to analyze which factors are conducive to this
rapid expansion.
4.2.1. Market Economy: Mafias’ Best Ally ...
In local and global liberal markets, Mafias benefit from structural advantages as it
doesn’t fear competition, it can use coercion to eliminate it, and finally can inflect
workforce and clients using corruption violent threats. Unlike other actors, Mafias
aren’t limited by any moralistic considerations and they opportunistically take advantage
of any enrichment prospect, any favorable evolution that liberal markets
offer them. In the 1970s when offshore fiscal paradises became an accepted and
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