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This is one of the scariest books I have read in a long time, and it isn't even part of the fiction-horror genre of literature. This is nonfiction at its best. Misha Glenny, an award-winning reporter for the BBC World News and a contributor to most major American and European newspapers takes us on a tour of globalized organized crime talking to police, victims, politicians, and above all, the criminals themselves many of whom speak openly and proudly of their exploits. Credible sources such as the IMF, the World Bank, and other research organizations report that the shadow economy of criminal enterprise accounts for between 15 and 20 percent of global domestic product (GDP), and that is a fact that every policy-making body whether governmental, corporate, or other should consider when making new laws and regulations. Yet even as I say that, Glenny writes about how governments and industries of all sorts are so imbedded with the criminal enterprise that when a money trail is followed, it soon becomes impossible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate business activities. To give us a bit of history, Glenny takes us first into the Balkans, then into the former Soviet Union and into Eastern Europe where international criminal organizations first found nurture through the new rules of industrial globalization. Then he ties the spread to Israel, India, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, the United States, Columbia, Brazil, Japan, and finally China. The role of many other countries is mentioned: Great Britain, Netherlands, Spain, North Korea, to name a few. How could this growth have occurred? There are a number of factors that came together in a relatively short span of time:
The resulting chaos where the old rules no longer applied gave existing local criminal organizations new opportunities, and enticed otherwise decent people whose livelihood had disappeared under sanctions against their country by the United States and other countries into making a radical change in how they earned a living to support themselves and their families. It is the developed world of Western Europe and North America who are the insatiable consumers of the goods and services provided by the rest of the world's countries whether legitimate or not. Most of this book is about the criminal underworld, but Misha Glenny also writes about the heroic efforts of the police in various countries to reign in the organized crime networks, and more and more they are working internationally to help each other. But it behooves all of us, especially our industries, to be on the watch for where we might be contributing to international crime, and after reading this book we might be able to put two and two together in a way that we couldn't before. For example, Glenny reveals the connection between India's big movie industry Bollywood and organized crime. American news reports are saying that Viacom's Dreamworks studio is working out a deal with Bollywood's Reliance Group for some sort of joint venture. Should we worry? I don't know, but if I were Steven Spielberg, I'd want to track that money trail! I highly recommend this book to all readers, but especially to policy-makers and law enforcement officers at all levels. Organized crime can be contained, as Mish Glenny shows so well, but it takes vigilance from all of us.
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