FREE ESSAY ON THIEVES' WORLD REVIEW

THIEVES' WORLD REVIEW

In Claire Sterling's Thieves' World, new light is shed on the current status of organized
crime in the world today. The days of crime families battling it out in the streets is a
thing of the past. The fall of communism in Soviet Russia and the tearing down of the
Berlin Wall in Germany opened the doors to a land of endless wealth and opportunity that
all the major crime syndicates have taken advantage of. Sterling suggests that the early
90's was the beginning of a convergence of all great crime syndicates. The Sicilians,
Russians, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakusa, and many other smaller groups began moving
toward an agreement to avoid conflict, devise common strategies, and work the planet
peaceably together. This is referred to as a broader pax mafiosa. With this agreement now
in place, the Italians and Colombians combined forces and moved in on the western half of
the Europe and flooded it with supplies of cocaine. Since the Italians no longer had
quite the stronghold in the United States that they used to have and because Europe was
their home turf, it only made sense for them to supply the country with cocaine from the
Colombians. This partnership between the two most importantly strengthened bonds between
the two criminal giants and provided a greater opportunity to take advantage of the newly
spawned opportunities in ex-communist Russia.
With the downfall of communist Russia, the mafia only increased it's regular activities
in the former U.S.S.R. This was especially true when it came to laundering dirty money.
The money was used to buy Rubles and then reinvested into real estate and other ventures
in Russia. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was even quoted as saying that, nearly
two-thirds of Russia's commercial structure has ties to the criminal world. At one time
the mafia in Russia was considered to be the fastest growing crime organization on the
planet, with more than five thousand different groups. It's like the old Texas oil-boom
towns, a constant parade of con men, promoters, and shady customers...the greatest
collection of sleazebags in the world, remarked U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Robert Strauss.

In America, law enforcement has been battling organized crime for the last 3 decades, but
it seems that the battle has just begun. The battle now, according to the author, is not
as much directly with the Cosa Nostra, as it is with the small gangs that hire out for
them. The Hispanics, Asians, Mexicans, black street gangs, such as the Crips and the
Bloods, as well as motorcycles gangs like the Hell's Angel and Pagans are it's working
partners. Along with the problems these smaller less organized gangs is the concern of
supposed huge influx of what the author calls the Cosa Nostra's true peers, the Triads,
Yakusa, and Russian mafias with twice if not quadruple the membership as the original
Italian crime families. Taking this into consideration, it has become the main strategy
of the FBI to ensure that no other criminal organization can ever achieve a comparable
level of power, as the Cosa Nostra. 
The weak point of all these organized crime groups seems to be their money, with out
money, they have no power. One high ranking informer from and Italian crime family
stated, What bothers us most is when you take our money away. We'd rather stay in jail
and keep the money than be free without the money. However, the biggest problem is
finding the money. The DEA claims that it might be seizing about 2 percent of the
Colombians cocaine money. Any amount of money can be sent from anywhere in the world.
Roughly a trillion dollars a day moves in and out of the United States, be it legal as
well as illegal.
Sterling suggests that just as these criminal mastermind organizations are joining forces
to increase business, this is exactly the way in which they have to be dealt with. One of
the biggest problems deals with that of personally privacy. With the rapid pace at which
technology is moving, it is becoming increasingly easier to gather information of some
type on everyone. It is paramount, suggests the author, that governments provide the
means necessary for obtaining this information, especially to those agencies that are
charged with fighting organized crime today.