From: European Council on Foreign Relations
SUMMARY
- Over the past 20 years, the role of Russian organised crime in Europe has shifted considerably. Today, Russian criminals operate less on the street and more in the shadows: as allies, facilitators and suppliers for local European gangs and continent-wide criminal networks.
- The Russian state is highly criminalised, and the interpenetration of the criminal ‘underworld’ and the political ‘upperworld’ has led the regime to use criminals from time to time as instruments of its rule.
- Russian-based organised crime groups in Europe have been used for a variety of purposes, including as sources of ‘black cash’, to launch cyber attacks, to wield political influence, to traffic people and goods, and even to carry out targeted assassinations on behalf of the Kremlin.
- European states and institutions need to consider RBOC a security as much as a criminal problem, and adopt measures to combat it, including concentrating on targeting their assets, sharing information between security and law-enforcement agencies, and accepting the need to devote political and economic capital to the challenge.
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An RBOC presence is much more likely to form along the routes used for illicit commerce, especially at nodes where shipments have to be carried onwards, such as ports, or at final destinations, such as big cities, where wholesale consignments are broken down into smaller loads for re-sale. Indeed, RBOC has emerged as a key wholesale supplier of a variety of physical commodities for the street gangs of Europe. Around one-third of Afghan heroin now reaches the continent via the so-called ‘northern route’ that runs through Russia and there are flows of counterfeit goods, such as untaxed cigarettes, smuggled migrants and trafficked sex- and labour-slaves, from Russia and China into Europe. Further to this, there are reverse flows: money moved into Russia to launder it in a financial system not known for its probity, stolen goods, and even European foodstuffs and luxuries under sanction. These items are largely smuggled via Poland and Lithuania and then Belarus.[9]
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In September 2014, Estonian Kapo (Security Police) officer Eston Kohver was about to meet an informant, when an FSB snatch squad crossed the border with Russia and forcibly abducted him. He was convicted on trumped-up espionage charges and subsequently traded for a Russian agent. The primary reason for the brazen raid appears not have been the exchange, nor even a chance to warn Estonia of Russia’s capacity and willingness to intrude, so much as to derail Kohver’s ongoing investigation into illegal cross-border cigarette trafficking. The evidence suggests that the FSB was facilitating the smuggling activity through an RBOC group in return for a cut of the profits. This was not for the enrichment of the officers concerned, but to raise operational funds for active political measures in Europe that had no Russian ‘fingerprints’ on them. RBOC’s vulnerability to Moscow’s pressure, the advantages to be gained from cooperation, and the considerable assets the criminals hold, make them useful sources of chernaya kassa (‘black accountʼ funds), which can be used for mischief abroad more easily than directly moving funds out of Russia.
