International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 95

International Journal on Criminology
destination. At the time of his arrest, which led to the seizure of nine tons of cocaine
and the dismantling of a worldwide maritime empire, Nicola Gratteri, Italy’s
top anti-Mafia prosecutor, commented: “He is the biggest cocaine importer in the
world, he organises purchases of 300,000 kg at a time” (Popham 2013). Pannunzi’s
major innovation was the creation of Mafias’ joint ventures gathering cosca and
locali behind his name, which allowed us to considerably lower the cocaine prices
and to increase the volume shipped. Nowadays, brokers are increasingly hired and
operating online through the unregulated darkweb (Glenny 2009).
4.2.3. Mafias’ Exploitation of Globalization
Firstly, Mafias have considerably benefited from globalization thanks to the development
of new trade and transport connections. In fact, thanks to their strategic
geographic location and their control of key trade hubs, such as Hong Kong or
New York, Mafias have considerably expanded ancient and new illicit trafficking
networks. Albanese Mafias have thrived thanks to its positioning between Turkey
and Europe. In association with Turkish and Italian Mafias, the 15 largest Albanese
criminal clans have taken control over much of the heroin and human trafficking
arriving from South East Asia and Northern Africa to Europe (Glenny 2009). In a
2001 investigation, the Economist affirmed that 80% of London’s sex industry was
controlled by the Albanian Mafia (Associated Press 2001). Another example is
the extension of Camorra’s waste management activity, transporting and dumping
toxic waste, in Romania (Tarihi 2012). Finally, Nigerian syndicates have notoriously
developed human trafficking networks, notably prostitution, from West Africa
to Europe and the Middle East thanks to the fact that their sexual slaves were
cheaper than the Eastern Europe “workforce,” thus replacing them on the market,
a purely capitalistic market principle (UNODC 2010).
The exploitation of internal and international migration flows has been historically
associated with Mafias’ developments since the emergence of industrialized
and globalized societies in the late nineteenth century. Mafias indeed provide
jobs, security, a sense of communitarian solidarity, and proximity to uprooted
populations. Chinese workers’ immigration has, for example, played a significant
role in Triads’ expansion. They could indeed trade and store illicit goods as well as
create new markets thanks to their presence in Chinatowns all around the world
(CIA 2000). In recent decades, new means of transportation and communication,
new trade, and human routes, as well as a growing number of internal conflicts,
have fostered new immigration waves and innovative interested appropriation of
these flows by new contenders in the criminal upper-world. The structural flexibility
and adaptation capacity of Nigerian Criminal Syndicates (NCS) have indeed
fostered their reliance on Nigerian Diaspora to expand worldwide (CIA 2000). It
is even probable that NCS dictated the geographical implementation of extremely
poor and uneducated migrants according to their criminal needs. In fact, in recent
years, Nigerian communities have surprisingly been established in Japan, Paki-
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