Organised crime is present in every country and is a growing transnational security threat. Increasingly technology-enabled, it does not respect national or international boundaries and prospers in ungoverned spaces such as fragile and post-conflict states. Motivated by the acquisition of wealth, it is arguably beyond the power of any one government agency or nation to contain effectively. Organised crime also penetrates national defence, security, and intelligence establishments and intersects with corruption in these spheres. TI-DSP director Mark Pyman and William Hughes, in their article Organised Crime: Joint Responsibility, argue that “A new form of coalition – between law enforcement agencies, anti-corruption bodies, and civil society – is urgently needed to understand and tackle this threat effectively.”

In fact, national defence and security forces are particularly susceptible to infiltration by organised criminal elements. The military, security, and intelligence bodies possess not only a monopoly on the means of violence, as protectors of national security and enforcers of order, but also have privileged access to classified information, arms stocks, natural and financial resources, and national pillars of power. This can be exacerbated by a historically privileged position of the military in a country.

Fujimori-era Peru: an example of organised crime

Fujimori-era Peru is an illustrative example of the link between defence and security corruption and organised crime. During his 1990-2000 rule, former President Alberto Fujimori created an elaborate network of organised transnational crime, particularly arms and drug trafficking, corruption, and human rights abuses. This network intersected and cooperated with a criminal grouping led by Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, head of Peru’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) and primary security advisor to Fujimori. After Fujimori’s authoritarian government collapsed following his attempt to secure an unconstitutional third term, video recordings were made public depicting him bribing members of the opposition. The following investigations exposed the Montesinos-Fujimori network as a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise engaged in addition to drugs and arms smuggling, extortion, embezzlement, and bribery. It is noteworthy that the exorbitant graft was enabled by legal regulations permitting the executive powers to shield the military procurement process from disclosure or public scrutiny. As one observer subsequently noted, the Fujimori government aimed to “incorporate corruption as a structuring element of the various aspects of the police organised, which was to cross-section not only processes and systems, but also people and values, thus making it easier to subdue and dominate their members.”                            (Costa, 2006)

In such circumstances counter-corruption strategies will have little chance of success unless organised crime is prioritised and addressed at the same time. Similarly,  tackling organised crime cannot  be effective without addressing the underlying market structure which in turn relies on corruption networks.

Read more on Our Work.

Read more on Political Risks.

Read more on our Focus Areas.