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Description
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets. No one would foresee that the greatest... read more
Summary
Guns, Drugs and Women – Misha Glenny travels from Eastern Europe to South America, Africa, Israel, India, Dubai, Canada, China and Japan tracing the globalisation of crime since the early 1990s. The globalised economy may well be ‘Flat’, but it also casts one hell of a shadow.
Memorable Quotes
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“One of the most violent and feared groups to emerge in Moscow and elsewhere was the Chechen mafia. Their mere reputation for being both fearless and gruesome was often sufficient to cow an opponent or persuade a businessman to take them on as his Krysha (literally ‘roof’). But their members were not drawn exclusively from the Caucasus, let alone from Chechnya: ‘The Chechen mafia (who should not be confused with the guerrillas fighting in the Chechen war) became a brand name, a franchise – McMafia if you life,’ explained Mark Galeotti, who has devoted the last fifteen years to studying the Russian Mob. ‘They would sell the moniker “Chechen” to protection rackets in other towns provided they paid, of course, and provided they all ways carried out their word. If a group claimed a Chechen connection, but didn’t carry out its threats to the letter, it was devaluing the brand. The original Chechens would come after them”
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“All manner of operatives lost their jobs: secret police, counterintelligence officers, special-forces commandos and border guards, as well as homicide detectives and traffic cops. Their skills included surveillance, smuggling, killing people, establishing networks and blackmail. The Police and even the KGB were clueless as to how one might enforce contract law. The protection rackets and Mafiosi were not so clueless – their central role in the new Russian economy was to ensure that contracts entered into were honoured. They were the new law-enforcement agencies, and the oligarchs needed their services. By 1999, there were more than 11,500 registered ‘Private Security Firms’, employing more than 800,000 people. Of these, almost 200,000 had licences to carry arms. The Russian Interior Ministry has estimated that there were at least half as many again that remained unregistered.”
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“One group of people.. saw real opportunity in this dazzling mixture of upheaval, hope and uncertainty. These men understood instinctively that rising living standards in the West, increased trade and migration flows, and the greatly reduced ability of many governments to police their countries combined to form a goldmine. They were criminals, organised and disorganised, but they were also good capitalists and entrepreneurs, intent on obeying the laws of supply and demand.”
First Sentence
Table of Contents
Authors & Contributors
- Misha Glenny (Author)
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