Transnational Tentacles

07/24/20 • 36 min

Transnational Tentacles: Global Hotspots of Balkan Organized Crime.

The Western Balkans is well understood now as an important transit point for the smuggling of drugs, arms and people. But what has been less understood is how over the past few decades, criminal groups within the Western Balkans region and the global diaspora have carved out a place within the very highest echelons of the criminal world.

Paper: Transnational Tentacles: Global Hotspots of Balkan Organized Crime.

Guests:

Walter Kemp, Senior Fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Fatjona Mejdini, Field Network Coordinator, Balkans at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Susana Morán, investigative journalist in Ecuador specialising in organized crime

Mandy Wiener, journalist, broadcaster and author of Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed

Transnational Tentacles: Global Hotspots of Balkan Organized Crime.

Paper: Transnational Tentacles: Global Hotspots of Balkan Organized Crime.

Guests:

Walter Kemp, Senior Fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Fatjona Mejdini, Field Network Coordinator, Balkans at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Susana Morán, investigative journalist in Ecuador specialising in organized crime

Mandy Wiener, journalist, broadcaster and author of Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed

Previous Episode

Illegal Logging & Organized Crime in Chihuahua, Mexico

People and Forests at Risk: Organized Crime, trafficking in persons and deforestation in Chihuahua, Mexico.

The highland ranges of the Sierra Madre are cool and temperate forests – with several species of Oak, conifers and a number of pines, and logging is permitted here. But excessive legal and illegal logging is contributing to rapid deforestation.

Organized criminal groups have established their position within the illegal logging trade, with them comes violence, corruption, kidnapping, extortion, displacement of indigenous communities and persecution of environmental and human-rights defenders.

Presenters: Livia Wagner and Jack Meegan-Vickers

Guests:

Diana Siller, co-author of the paper and Director of JADE (Environmental Justice and human rights in Mexico)

Julia Urrunaga, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an international NGO who investigate forest and environmental crimes.

Sound Effects: Freesfx

Next Episode

Extortion in the Northern Triangle

In the Northern Triangle countries of Central America - Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, extortion is so pervasive that it has been called “A way of life”.

The growth in extortion in the region was defined by the expansion of street gangs MS13 and Barrio 18. They have a stranglehold on the countries in which they operate, extorting rich and poor and even international corporations.

The revenue from extortion has provided gangs in the region with a solid economic operating base, and at the same time allowed them to diversify into other criminal enterprises – they are now transnational organized criminal groups.

Presenter: Jack Meegan-Vickers

Speakers:

1. Guillermo Vazquez del Mercado Almada, Senior Analyst, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

2. Evelyn Espinosa, Research Adviser at Diálogos

3. Pamela Ruiz, Consultant at the Coalition for Resilience Project and member of the GI Network of Experts.

4. Professor Lucia Dammert, University of Santiago, Chile and member of the GI Network of Experts.

GI Extortion Project

Paper: A Criminal Culture: Extortion in Central America

Other content available at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime website.