Mafia organizations are more of a threat than terrorist groups because they modify democracies from within by introducing their illicit earnings into the legal economy. Their businesses defeat the competition because, by counting on these illegal parallel markets, they can lower their prices. Mafia assets also finance the banking, construction and transportation sectors of the economy.
When we think about mafia organizations, we are inclined to see only their illicit activities: drug trafficking, weapons and racketeering. But this is only the surface; behind these lies an enormous and illegally amassed economic power, which is camouflaged and laundered until it becomes legal. As difficult as it is to track the routes of drugs, it is even harder to follow a money trail in the era of online banking and cyberfinance.
To get an idea about the economic power of mafia organizations, consider that in 2009 the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, revealed that money from organized crime made up the only liquid investment capital available to some banks seeking to avoid failure during the 2008 crisis. Between 2007 and 2009, banks in the United States and Europe lost more than one trillion dollars on bad loans and toxic assets. Liquidity had become the main problem of the banking system. As a result, banks loosened their protections against money laundering and opened up their safes to the mafia’s dirty money, which was primarily from drug trafficking. These funds were then laundered and absorbed into the legal economic system.
European countries have very few protections against the aggression of the mafia’s assets. Today mafia organizations not only launder their money in tax havens, but everywhere. London has become the European and possibly the global capital for money laundering. Germany is high on the Financial Secrecy Index, ahead of Bahrain, Bermuda and Panama.
The strength of criminal organizations is the lack of attention they receive from governments and their ability to garner social consensus – in cases where the state is absent, the mafia “offers services” to citizens. Their winning formula is simple: an extreme tendency toward economic evolution combined with a minimal tendency toward cultural evolution.
It is a mistake to talk about “European mafias” or “mafias in Europe” because the mafia is the most globalized multinational corporation there is. Drug trafficking, its biggest revenue maker, requires a network that involves diverse countries and organizations all around the world. Until now, repression has been the only method used to fight it. However, it is inconceivable that the mafia’s impact on legal markets and democratic stability is not the primary concern of world leaders. It is also inconceivable that moves toward the legalization of drugs and improvements in anti-money laundering laws have not been made. Not to mention the fact that terrorists and mafia organizations often act in synergy.
And so, we must ask ourselves: How are terrorist organizations financed? Organized crime groups do not scorn anyone; they do business with the richest banks, as well as the most dangerous terrorist groups.
