There are almost 5,000 criminal gangs in the UK. But the old family firms are gone – today’s big players are multinational, diversified and tech-savvy.
By Duncan Campbell
Who rules the underworld today, and where do they conduct their business? Once there were the familiar mugshots and Runyonesque nicknames, the clubs and pubs where the usual suspects gathered, plotted and schemed. Now organised crime is run like any other business, and its leading figures look like every other broker or tycoon. We have entered into a world of what Sir Rob Wainwright, until recently Europe’s most senior police officer, calls “anonymised” crime. The underworld has become the overworld.
The National Crime Agency has estimated that £90bn of criminal money is being laundered through the UK every year, 4% of the country’s GDP. London has become the global capital of money-laundering and the beating heart of European organised crime. English is now the international underworld’s lingua franca. Crime is an essential part of the British economy, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs, not just for professional criminals – the NCA reckons there are 4,629 organised crime groups in operation – but for police and prison officers, lawyers and court officials, and a security business that now employs more than half a million people.
Continue reading...from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2FRciXb
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
No comments:
Post a Comment