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 87